NOTE: I'll be on PBS Now tonight discussing this and other issues related to the 2009 elections. Check local listings here and tune in! - D
I write a lot about the importance of fair trade -- specifically, about the significance of making sure our international economic laws do not encourage job outsourcing, labor abuse, environmental degradation and other bad behavior. Often times, these trade issues seem esoteric, abstract, and caught in their a silo that only, say, union workers care about.
But nothing could be further from the truth, as my new newspaper column today shows. Because our economy and environment is so globalized (the former because of technology, the latter because, well, we all live on one planet), trade issues tend to touch everything. They touch health care through the drug importation debate, they touch jobs through the outsourcing debate, they touch financial reform through international regulatory debates, and they touch global warming. Indeed, that last debate over climate change legislation is probably the best example of a bill that at first glance seems totally unrelated to trade, and yet could be rendered almost completely meaningless if it doesn't include real trade reform.
In an article headlined "Climate Bill Hinges On Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown," the Hill newspaper shows the Buckeye State's junior senator explaining exactly why:
Brown wants the Senate to consider imposing tariffs on foreign competitors operating in countries with lax rules for greenhouse gas emissions.
"Carbon dioxide emissions expand if a company closes down in Toledo, Ohio, and moves to Shanghai, where the emissions standards are weaker," he said. Brown describes this phenomenon as "carbon leakage."
I could reiterate what Brown said with an "in other words" paragraph, but I don't even have to. What he's saying makes perfect sense when you take more than five seconds to think past the idiocy of the Punditburo's creation of false choices between supposedly Enlightened Free Trade and allegedly Luddite Protectionism.
It's the same thing for so many issues. We can reform our own domestic laws all we want -- but on so many priorities, if those reforms are not accompanied by trade policy changes, then we aren't making the kinds of strides we need to make. We can have stimulus bills that seem great, but whose resources are unduly spent sending jobs overseas because its Buy America provisions have been gutted. We can have a health care bill that breaks the bank because it doesn't reform the laws that prevent Americans from buying lower-priced prescription drugs. We can have a climate bill that is touted as major progress, but because it is stripped of trade reform, it effectively encourages companies to head overseas and subsequently emit more greenhouse gas than they were when they were here.
You get the point: We ignore the fair trade cause at our peril.
The column relies on grassroots support -- and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.