Nation:  What the Democrats Must Learn From Brexit About Free-Trade Deals [View all]

[villager]

Sanders and Clinton are right to oppose the TPP, and the Democratic Party should do the same.

By John Nichols


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 The Leave campaigners in the UK succeeded because there are millions of working-class voters—many of them in the left-leaning “Labour heartlands” of northern England—who know that globalization has not worked for them. Well, there are millions of Americans in battleground states such as Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina who know that globalization has not worked for them.

Clinton got it right Sunday when she told the US Conference of Mayors, “Just as we have seen there are many frustrated people in Britain, we know there are frustrated people here at home, too.”

While a substantial portion of British voters blamed the European Union for the misery of austerity and deindustrialization, a substantial number of American voters blame the misery of austerity and deindustrialization on free-trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, permanent normalization of trade relations with China, and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. There is broad agreement with the assessment of groups such as Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and the Citizen Trade Campaign, which have explained that corporate-friendly free-trade deals have harmed workers, farmers, small-business owners, communities, and the environment. This is one of the reasons TPP-critic Bernie Sanders ran so well in the Democratic primaries, and Clinton (who once praised the TPP) now says she is opposed to the agreement.

The shared anti-TPP stance of the two Democratic contenders led to speculation that the Democratic platform, as drafted by a 15-member committee made up of Clinton backers, Sanders backers,and others, might formally line up the party in opposition to the agreement.

When the platform-drafting committee took up the issue in St. Louis last week, Congressman Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat who serves as a cochair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, proposed to add language rejecting the trade deal. But the proposal was defeated, after Clinton-allied drafting committee members said they did not want to go on record against a deal that has been backed by President Obama.

Ellison, who was one of Obama’s first backers when he ran for the presidency in 2008, says, “I am disappointed that my amendment to take a strong stand against the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a position shared by both Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders—was not included.” The congressman argues that it is vital to take a strong stand against the TPP, and he is encouraging the full platform committee to adopt his anti-TPP amendment when it meets in July.

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https://www.thenation.com/article/what-the-democrats-must-learn-about-free-trade-deals-from-brexit/