Free Trade

For all the talk from "free trade"-backing politicians about needing to engage the world, most of them understand almost nothing about how the world sees our international economic policies. As I show in my new newspaper column this week, our so-called Washington Consensus policies on globalization are stirring a...

On May 1, 2006 millions of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets in 140 cities in 39 states across the United States as part of a wave of mass marches that spring in repudiation of extreme anti-immigrant legislation, passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives. The vast...

I've said before that I believe that the Democratic nomination fight is over, though the hype may drag on for a bit. But, a nice chunk of super delegates--perhaps as many as a dozen or more--may make their choice based on where the candidates stand on trade. And that's...

On Monday, I wrote about Hillary Clinton airing an ad decrying the closure of a defense manufacturing factory that her husband, Bill Clinton, helped close by approving the sale of the company to a Chinese state-owned firm. Now, ABC News is running with the story, and uncovers some...

Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.

General Electric's former CEO Jack Welch is one of the great economic royalists of the modern day. He is the guy who said the businessman's dream is to "have every plant you own...

On Monday, Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton came to Pittsburgh for substantive dialogue about their trade policies and, particularly, how they plan to address China's unfair trade practices. The Alliance for American Manufacturing, a labor-management, non-partisan partnership, hosted the forum and rightly put the candidates on the spot...

A little more than a year ago, Ari Berman penned an article for The Nation about the culture of corruption seething inside the Democratic Party. He focused in on Montana Sen. Max Baucus (D), who he labeled "K Street's favorite Democrat." Now the hometown papers in Montana have...

Thus endeth another Petraeus week on Capitol Hill.

I have to say, I was impressed at the caliber of the questions asked, but severely disappointed at the caliber of the answers given. The latter is no real surprise, but the former is indeed an improvement.

Before I begin handing out...

Hillary Clinton's "Bill Clinton Problem" is a joke that has become not so funny. In a debate earlier this year, Mitt Romney got a huge laugh line when he said, "The idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I can't imagine." Hillary...

As progressives, we sometimes feel a bit uneasy about making declarative statements about the values people express in their actions. We hesitate, for instance, to call things "evil," not wanting to be like George "With Us, or Against Us" Bush. That's understandable -- absolutism can lead to bad places. However,...

Reporters got an interesting response when Senator Hillary Clinton was asked in Pittsburgh about Sam Stein's bang-up reporting that connected the dots in Bill Clinton's work to promote the Colombia Free Trade deal. Reports Newsweek, "First, Clinton giggled. Then she laughed. She waved her arms in the air....

It seems the Democrats have, for the time being, coalesced around a skeptical position regarding free trade. How long will it last? We'll see.

The trade debate called to mind a much earlier presidential campaign, and a classical moment in presidential speechwriting. Running for president in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt...

This just off the Reuters wire:

The House of Representatives will decide on Thursday whether to put off indefinitely a vote on the Colombia free-trade agreement that President George W. Bush submitted to Congress this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Pelosi, announcing the move to reporters on Wednesday,...

If I was Susan Collins, I'd be a bit miffed at my sister Republican Senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe. Collins is up for re-election and, though the polling in the state is not showing her in grave danger in her race against Democrat Rep. Tom Allen, that race will become...

The economy is tanking. Gas is headed to $4.00 a gallon. One in ten homes are "under water," worth less than their mortgages. The IMF predicts up to $1 trillion in financial losses, meaning banks and securities firms that have written off abut $230 billion are still staring at the...

If we had been born in Colombia, we would probably be dead.

That's right. As members of our respective labor unions, the fight for higher wages, better working conditions, and a secure pension could have cost us our lives.

Thirty nine trade unionists were murdered in Colombia in...

Virtually every time a so-called "free trade" agreement comes before Congress, you can almost predict what happens: the elites rally to figure out a way to push through these deals, pouring in huge resources to buy votes and pushing a propaganda campaign that is far-reaching. And it is no different...

A Latin Country Asks for Our Help. Can We Rise Above Politics to Give It?

Trade legislation debates are usually about dry-as-dust topics like reciprocity and dumping. But sometimes they really matter. Take the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which the Bush administration will send to Congress...