There are few issues on which mainstream U.S. media coverage is less adequate than trade. The standard framing for reporting on trade is that U.S. environmental and labor organizations are trying to impose U.S. standards on third-world countries (which don't feel they can afford them), and that the U.S. public faces a hard choice -- retreat into protectionism, which denies these countries a chance to develop, or lower our own standards.
Occasionally, however, a different underlying dynamic pops through the surface...
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