Free Trade and Clinton vs. Sanders [View all]

[kennetha]

I'm a big supporter of Clinton's and think she will be an infinitely better president than anything the Republicans have to offer and orders of magnitude better than Sanders would be. The one area where she has somewhat disappointed me is on the topic of Free Trade. I think that in her heart of hearts she is a free-trader. How could someone who served as Secretary of State not be? How could she not know that for the world as a whole Free Trade is a good thing not a bad thing. It is an essential ingredient in the attempt to alleviate global poverty and essential ingredient in addressing global migration problem. People have to be able to work productively in their nations of origins, to trade productive work for higher living standards that keeps them rooted in their communities.

I am sure she believes such things. But because free trade doesn't sell in certain democratic constituencies or perhaps even with the public at large, she is playing it very, very cagey.

But I wish she would at least not let go unchallenged Sanders simplistic narrative that free trade only benefits the billionaire and millionaire class and is mainly responsible for the decline of manufacturing in places like Michigan and Ohio. it is just not true.

First up in the decline of Detroit was the rise of Toyota and other Japanese automakers in the 70's and 80's -- long before NAFTA. They were producing more fuel efficient cars than Detroit -- during a time when an oil crises was making Americans hungry for such cars. Those Japanese car makers kept gaining market share, despite the fact that those auto were subject to voluntary import restrictions. And Japanese trucks were then and are still subject to a 25% import duty, but the way. This was all way before NAFTA.

Moreover, when the factories did start moving out of Detroit -- again long before NAFTA -- they started out moving to the South, not to foreign shores. In the South not only were unions were weaker, but States were throwing tax incentives around like candy. Lots of Northerners moved South in those days chasing the fleeing manufacturing economy.

Eventually the move South were followed by moves out of the country. But Sanders gets things wrong about the current incentives to build factories in Mexico.. Mexican auto factories actually pay pretty well -- not by old UAW standards -- but not close to 25 cents an hour as he says. More like $8 to $10 dollars an hour.

In addition, Mexico is a heavily export depended economy. It has free trade agreements with many more countries than the US does. o if I am a manufacturer and I want to trade with the world, building my factory in Mexico makes it much easier to do that. Making the US less trade friendly would therefore only make matters worse.

Sanders also doesn't address the effects of automation on manufacturing jobs. A long time ago, when i was a young man, I actually worked as a spot welder in an auto assembly plant. It was back breaking work, but it paid very well. But that kind of job no longer exists in any auto assembly job in the world. Spot welding is done by spot welding robots on completely automated spot welding bays. Lots of manufacturing jobs have disappeared because of technology and they are NEVER coming back.

The point is that the decline of manufacturing in the US has many cause. Free trade may have played some role, but it is an infinitely more complex subject than Sanders in particular makes it out to be. And on the upside free trade has played a significant role in reducing world poverty and contributing to the gradual but steady rise of a global middle class. And that is a good thing for everybody.

Yes free trade contributes, as one factor among others, to economic dislocations here in the US. And those dislocations need to be addressed by serious progressive policies.

What I don't get is why Clinton -- who usually happily acknowledges and openly embraces such complexities in other spheres -- has been so silent on this subject. I have no doubt that she has a much more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of all this than Sanders -- for whom nuance is a dirty word, it seems.

I guess our politics is not made for dealing in nuance and complexities. It's made for simplifying grand narratives, painted mostly in black and white and maybe a few shades of gray here and there. That's what mobilizes people, I guess. Depressing thought though.