Elizabeth Warren's Big Break From 30 Years Of Pro-Corporate Trade Policy

[DemocracyMouse]

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but she's pretty darn amazing. The energy, sincerity and brilliance of this woman is beyond refreshing. Eleanor Roosevelt?

Try FDR...

Elizabeth Warren’s Big Break From 30 Years Of Pro-Corporate Trade Policy:
It’s time to get over the 1990s.

by Zach Carter

Huffpost: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5cf5fc3fe4b0e346ce83b31a

“America chose to pursue a trade policy that prioritized the interests of capital over the interests of American workers,” Warren told a crowd in Detroit Tuesday. “We have encouraged companies to invest abroad, ship jobs overseas, and keep wages low. All in the interest of serving multinational companies and international capital with no particular loyalty to the United States.”

What matters in Warren’s vision is not the specifics of any particular trade tool or enforcement tactic. Warren isn’t pro-tariff or anti-tariff, for instance. It depends on the tariff. She’s in favor of international rules that are designed to achieve actual policy goals other than corporate profit. What we call “free trade,” she emphasizes, isn’t really a system where governments get out of the way. The rules of international commerce determine its outcomes ― and there is no such thing as a trade regime without rules. When governments agreed to grant 20-year monopolies on life-saving medicines under WTO treaties, for instance, they were not simply allowing nature to take its course — they were setting up a system.

In Warren’s telling, this was not an accident or a tactical failure. It was a deliberate ideological agenda. By the 1990s, a bipartisan consensus had emerged in Washington which maintained that global peace and prosperity were best supported by an international trade regime in which governments got out of the way and let markets work their magic. Trade would expand, wealth would accumulate, and international comity would ensue. Trade did expand and wealth did in fact accumulate ― increasingly, in the hands of a narrow community of corporate shareholders, at the expense of public health, environmental conservation and worker wages. This was an act of geopolitics, not the verdict of natural science or the intractable demand of human progress.

“Globalization isn’t some mysterious force whose effects are inevitable and beyond our control,” Warren said. “The truth is that Washington policies ― not unstoppable market forces ― are a key driver of the problems American workers face.”

[DemocracyMouse]

1. She also reminds me of the trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt

(and Howard Taft who broke up even more monopolies than Teddy).

Warren is the type of progressive capitalist that Stiglitz has been writing about.

[calimary]

2. Bookmarking.

[DemocracyMouse]

4. Warren/Inslee? Why not?

East/West coast sandwich. Inslee with the strong environmental messaging

[calimary]

8. Well, he sure is making it work in his own state.

Last edited Wed Jun 5, 2019, 05:08 PM - Edit history (1)

As a new grandma, I worry more than ever about what kind of planet she (my granddaughter) and all the other little babies in her generation will have.

Good Grief how fucking shortsighted things are being run these days!

I’m sorry it’s come to this, but it’s clearer and clearer to me that all the jobs in the world and all the affordable health care in the world won’t mean squat if our planet is burning up.

Those in denial seem also to be primarily GOP, conservative, dismissive of science, and against immigration and immigrants - especially those who don’t look or talk like them. The accelerating climate crisis is going to render more land uninhabitable, which is going to create legions more homeless who will be driven to migration - and where are they going to go? And too many people in a position to start doing something definitive about it refuse to accept the reality of the crisis. And there tends to be far more of that head-in-the-sand attitude among the GOP than among the Dems.

Yet another reason why we can’t lose hope or let ourselves get discouraged. We HAVE TO stay engaged and vote like our lives depend on it. Our planet’s life certainly does.

[DemocracyMouse]

22. I hear you deeply

[msongs]

3. the progressive candidate with understanding of the problem, not just leftie sloganeering nt

[DemocracyMouse]

5. She's refreshingly rational! (But explains things clearly with good ol' fashioned verve)

Reminds me of Bill Clinton in that respect.

[marylandblue]

6. This is why she actually could win. Tariffs and anti-immigration are responses to globalization.

But technology created globalization, so there is no stopping it. It was always a question of what kind of globalization we would have. And for too long both parties agreed there was only one kind.

[Blue_true]

17. You make a couple of excellent points.

Technology is driving globalization and that trend will only accelerate.

So, how do governments cope and deliver economic justice for all of their citizens, not just the ones at the top?

In my view, the largest problem is big corporations playing national and state governments against eachother to wring out big tax breaks to locate/relocate facilities or to avoid paying fair income taxes. That stuff must be ended, in both the interests of all people in the world and business itself. Nationalism that is growing worldwide is serious, the current focus is on immigrants, but even rightwing extremists are starting to claim that business is screwing people. When there is agreement against business across a broad political spectrum, the physical safety of businesspeople and their ability to live in communities will be endangered, so it is in the best interest of business to stop beating down attempts to fix income inequality and work with governments to develop a working solution to the problem.

[Hoyt]

7. If "economic patriotism" is close to "America First," that got us trump, not interested.

Hope she fleshes this out a bit more and tells us which ones of trump’s tariffs she’s against.

I do agree distribution of wealth needs revision, but not through “economic patriotism!” which sounds way too much like America First.

Some of her ideas are excellent, then there’s this junk.

[Turin_C3PO]

9. What's wrong with wanting more jobs to stay in this country?

She’s not proposing protectionism or crazy tariffs like Trump is doing. Free trade must be fair trade.

[Hoyt]

11. She says she's not for or against tariffs. I'm sorry, America has taken more of it's

share or resources and wealth from foreign countries. Tariffs hurt foreign workers, and hurts ours as well.

America First is not something I’m interested in, and it helped get us trump.

If it’s good for you, that’s fine.

[Turin_C3PO]

13. I'm obviously not "America First".

And I’m not against other countries becoming more developed. I’m pro-globalization, against tariffs generally. I just think that certain trade policies should be looked at and I’m willing to hear Warren’s ideas out.

[Hoyt]

15. I agree. I would like her to provide details, but I don't like "economic patriotism."

[DemocracyMouse]

24. I think she's just trying to make progressive capitalism (Stiglitz) sound patriotic

If it reaches rural Americans, it works. Progressives know what she's talking about already – a humanly regulated economy

[still_one]

10. Tariffs are not a good thing, and the trade wars that result end in disaster. I agree that

distribution of wealth needs revision, and some of her ideas are excellent, but there is still a lot of questions on how she hope to get this distribution of wealth revision.

I don't believe you can undo globalization, the world's economies are too interlinked now

[Hoyt]

12. Exactly.

[still_one]

16. U was pretty much agreeing with what you just stated Hoyt. We are on the same page

[yaesu]

20. tariffs are a good idea if done longterm through congress not presidential decree

as they need to last ten years or more before US companies will invest capital into expanding production, new equipment, ect... tRumps tariffs only last as long as he's president so they won't create jobs, just raise prices.

[still_one]

21. They have a dismal history. They always lead to more expensive goods to consumers, and either full

or partial trade wars

Probably the best example of this was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which led to retaliation from other countries, and caused exports from America to fall by over 60%. We were just coming out of the Great Depression when that happened, and it not only stalled the economic recovery from that depression, but drove us deeper into it.

We disagree. Tariffs are not a good idea in my view, and I believe history has shown they have done more damage than good

[LanternWaste]

31. Who is arguing 'economic patriotism is close to America First' other than you?

Why focus on what a thing sounds like rather than what it is? Doing so seems like junk, part II.

[Hoyt]

32. I'm claiming it, mostly from what it is, and Warren and Sanders'

bashing of Obama’s efforts at TPP, etc. That helped get us trump, and I can’t believe she’s bringing that junk up again with a new name.

“Economic Patriotism” doesn’t sound good for us or the world. It sounds like another name for America First, and it has many similar elements.

[riverine]

14. President Obama compares Elizabeth Warren to Sarah Palin's "death panel" scare tactics

Obama Compares Progressive Opposition to Trade Deal to "˜Death Panels' as the Left Ramps Up Opposition


But the line was seen as a slap in the face to some progressives.

"It's shameful to see President Obama compare Democrats who oppose fast-tracking the TPP through Congress to Sarah Palin and the delusional 'death panels' rhetoric," said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, in a statement. "Frankly, it's beneath this president to resort to such name-calling."

The speech is the latest effort in the Obama team's hard sell to progressives. A group of former Obama campaign officials have also started a pro-TPP group called the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs. On Friday, George Zornick of The Nation tweeted that Obama joined a press call with Labor Secretary Thomas Perez on Friday and criticized politicians who "send emails out to their fundraising base that they're working to stop a secret deal"—a not-so-subtle shot at Warren.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/obama-compares-progressive-opposition-to-trade-deal-to-death-panels-as-the-left-ramps-up-opposition/446406/

For the record I am an Obama Democrat who fully supports the TPP.

[UrbScotty]

18. Saw and met her tonight in Lansing. She talked at length about her plans.

I am so excited for her campaign!

[PatrickforO]

19. Exactly. We cannot simply assume the 'free market' is benign,

and that government should merely 'get out of the way.'

Because of the primacy of the shareholder doctrine, which holds that CEOs and other C-Suite people are ONLY responsible for increasing shareholder earnings, greed runs rampant through the whole thing, unchecked by any beneficent force.

If we are going to cure the diseased root of the problem, we will dilute the fiduciary responsibility of C-Suite officers in publicly held companies to take into account not only shareholders, but the needs of workers, consumers and the environment.

What's that?

You mean Warren is ahead of us on this one? You mean her 'Accountable Capitalism Act,' introduced in August of 2018 does just that?

Wow! That Warren is really something.

She'd be a GREAT president.

[Green Line]

23. She's my Senator

I’ve called her office numerous times, both Boston and DC, nobody ever answers or returns calls, no email response, nothing. I’ve called my rep, Moulton and Ed Markey, always an answer and a response. I’m not impressed with her at all. Been trying for years, you can all have her, I hope she’s primaried next time. She’s a total phony, her beer ad, the dog she got to run, Harley posing, saying she’s Native American on her college app., and claiming it on her Harvard application. Nope, not for me.

[DemocracyMouse]

25. She's busy trying to research and write policies which can improve the country

If I rejected all my busy friends who are sluggish on returning calls, I'd have no friends. Give her a chance. She's busy for a good reason

[Green Line]

26. Please

Been calling for 6 years, no response ever, why do the others respond? They aren’t busy? 32% of voters in Mass think she should run for President, we know her better than the rest of the country, an appealing Republican could beat her here.

[DemocracyMouse]

29. I just called two of Warren's offices, one in Mass., the other in DC. Real helpful people answered.

[BlueMTexpat]

27. I LOVE

Elizabeth.

I am not so fond of some of the whinier responses in this thread

[backtoblue]

28. K&R

[DemocracyMouse]

30. Someone was concerned about not being able to reach Warren's people...

I called and got through easily and immediately to real, gosh darn human beings – one in Massachusetts and the other in DC. They represent the Senator Warren, not the candidate Warren and by law could only take questions related to the Senator. They were extremely sweet and helpful.

TO CONTACT SENATOR WARREN:

Boston
2400 JFK Federal Building
15 New Sudbury Street
Boston, MA 02203
Phone: [phone]

Washington
309 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: [phone]

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WARREN:

https://elizabethwarren.com

(Involves writing a message and providing an email. I did this and received a thank you immediately.)