John Nichols: Trade's Not Just a Blue-Collar Issue

[marmar]

from The Nation:



BLOG | Posted 04/15/2008 @ 9:23pm
Trade's Not Just a Blue-Collar Issue


New York Times columnist David Brooks, who knows a little less about economics than John McCain, finished up this week's rant against critics of free trade by suggesting that they were not paying attention to the economic realities of the pivotal primary state of Pennsylvania.

Condemning Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for acknowledging the damage done to Keystone State communities by trade pacts that have gutted out whole industries and tossed tens of thousands of workers into the dustbin of history, Brooks suggested that those advising the senator from Illinois were missing the point of Pennsylvania.

"What I don't understand is why the political consultants prefer this kind of rhetoric," wrote Brooks. "Aren't there windows in the vans they use to drive around the state? Don't they see that most middle-class voters are service workers in suburban office parks, not 1930s-style proletarians in steel mills?

"American voters aren't so stupid as to think their problems are caused by foreigners and malevolent lobbyists. When Obama speaks down to his audiences, it makes me so bitter I want to cling to my laptop and my college degree."

That's an amusing line – sure to be a hit at any elite gathering.

Too bad it perpetuates the lie that free trade only threatens the "1930s-style proletarians in steel mills" for whom Brooks displays such open disregard.

In fact, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs promoted by misguided trade policies now poses as much or more of a threat to "service workers in suburban office parks."

A fresh analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) of offshoring -- the corporate practice of moving work now performed in the U.S. to other countries – finds that more than one million Pennsylvania jobs are vulnerable. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=310924

[Kolesar]

1. It's the anxiety about the possibility of off-shoring that drives people crazy

There's this "Lou Dobbs, Sherrod Brown message" out there that really talks to people. They don't understand trade deeply, but they know enough to form an opinion.