Fareed's Take, on GPS. regarding the TPP

[House of Roberts]

"At the center of this is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It would not only be the largest trade deal in decades if it happened, involving most of Asia's large economies, and perhaps eventually even including China, but it would strongly reinforce American-style rules about free and open trade world-wide. Yet the president has not been able to get the fast track authority that makes it possible to negotiate such a trade deal. The Democratic Party, once the greatest champion of free trade, has long turned its back on it, a sad shift in a once open and optimistic party. And in recent years, Republican support for trade has also gotten much weaker." - Fareed Zakaria

I think I remember when the Democratic Party was for free trade. It was before Ronald Reagan turned the US from the world's largest creditor nation, and the world's largest exporter of finished products, into the world's largest debtor nation, and the world's largest importer of finished products. Once free trade began to be used to place the boot of capital on the throat of American workers, the Democratic Party turned against it. Zakaria sees free trade as beneficial to his native India, so he's for it, even though it is killing the American middle class.

[Romulox]

1. Your recollection is a bit off...

[pampango]

2. From 1880 to 1980 Democrats were the low-tariff party and repubs were for high tariffs.

Woodrow Wilson made a drastic lowering of tariff rates a major priority for his presidency. ... When the Republicans regained power after the war they restored their usual high rates, with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922. When the Great Depression hit, international trade shrank drastically. The crisis baffled the GOP, and it unwisely tried to raise tariffs again with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. This time it backfired, as Canada, Britain, Germany, France and other industrial countries retaliated with their own tariffs and special, bilateral trade deals. American imports and exports both went into a tailspin. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Dealers made promises about lowering tariffs on a reciprocal country-by-country basis which they did.

In 1934, the U.S. Congress, in a rare delegation of authority, passed the Reciprocal Tariff Act of 1934, which authorized the executive branch to negotiate bilateral tariff reduction agreements with other countries. The prevailing view then was that trade liberalization may help stimulate economic growth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history

Wilson and FDR did their part to lower the tariffs they inherited from their republican predecessors. They knew that progressive taxes and strong unions had more to do with a vibrant middle class.

Polls still show that Democratic voters support a more open world in terms of travel and trade while republicans favor more barriers.

[House of Roberts]

3. When the Republicans owed their success to domestic businesses,

they were for trade barriers to protect those businesses. When those businesses became multinational, their party lost their loyalty to domestic manufacturing, preferring cheap, foreign labor, as well as offshored profits. They became the screw-American-workers party, as well as the screw-the-American-treasury party.

[pampango]

5. Perhaps but why did Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ not support the tariffs

that republicans favored pre-1980? Did these Democrats not care about America's workers and middle class? Or did they see trade as a positive for Americans as long as there were progressive taxes, strong unions and effective safety nets to spread the benefits widely?

[sabrina 1]

4. He is WRONG. What the TPP would do is WEAKEN US laws and give power to even foreign corporations

to ignore, eg, Environmental laws. Perhaps Fahreed should take a look at Wilileaks leaks from the TPP on environmental issues eg. Or maybe he doesn't care much about our environment.