Elizabeth Warren released a trade plan Monday that’s closer to Donald Trump’s agenda than Barack Obama’s.
The sweeping trade agenda, posted on Medium ahead of a town hall in Toledo, Ohio, on Monday evening, channels many of the critiques of American trade policy from the left over the past several decades, especially from environmental and labor groups. The approach embraces some of Trump’s protectionist rhetoric and would amount to a dramatic shift in trade policy from Democratic administrations such as the Obama and Bill Clinton White Houses, as well as the George W. Bush administration.
Warren’s plans list nine separate criteria a country would have to meet before negotiating a trade deal with the U.S. Those standards include upholding and enforcing the labor rights laid out by the International Labour Organization, eliminating all domestic fossil fuel subsidies, fulfilling commitments from the Paris Climate Agreement, not running afoul of the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights, and not being on the Treasury Department’s monitoring list for manipulative currency practices.
The requirements would apply not only to new trade deals but to existing treaties that Warren pledges to renegotiate.
Taken together, Warren's mandates would fundamentally change American trade policy, potentially excluding many countries that would see the requirements as too onerous and transforming existing trade relationships. Warren’s policies would also likely face resistance in Congress from Republicans opposed to her environmental standards and from more moderate, trade-friendly Democrats.
“For decades, big multinational corporations have bought and lobbied their way into dictating America’s trade policy,” Warren wrote, calling the policies across Republican and Democratic administrations a “failed trade agenda.”
“Trade can be a powerful tool to help working families but our failed pro-corporate agenda has used trade to harm American workers and the environment. My plan represents a new approach to trade — one that uses America’s leverage to boost American workers and raise the standard of living across the globe.”
Both parties seem to have abandoned the American prescription for global stability that we put in place in the aftermath of WWII.
If she too is talking about revoking the WTO, she will complete the destruction Trump hath wrought.
BTW, I was speaking to a new Democratic member of Congress yesterday evening. I said that I was a Buttegieg fan, and s(he) said he was eminently qualified and sensible. I then said I would vote for anyone who emerged from the primaries. S(he) said there were two that s(he) would NOT vote for. Hmmmm. Wonder who.
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She'd be a good President. I think she'd hire smart, hard-working people who would temper her worst instincts. She seems to respect and value intelligence and integrity and independent thinking.
Peter Hamby writes for Vanity Fair: "Warren is cutting through the noise with a consistent message and a clear rationale for running. Halfway through the race, she might just be winning."