The world economy has changed so dramatically in the last year, and yet U.S. trade policy marches blithely on as if everything is the same. No change of course to shore up farm sectors against future price shocks or floods of dumped products. No admission that deregulating international finance was a mistake that contributed to the financial crisis. Perhaps a modest nod to the looming climate catastrophe, but only with a proposal for more trade in environmental goods, without consideration of how poor countries hit hardest by global warming will afford those goods.
As the WTO talks take place this week in Geneva, the silence in Washington is striking. Not a peep in the Washington Post (except for a couple of news feeds in the online edition). No one in the Administration or Congress stepping forward to make indignant noises about the importance of concluding the talks.
The big news on trade, at least in Washington, is the introduction of the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment (TRADE) Act by Senators Sherrod Brown and Byron Dorgan. That bill would mandate a review of existing trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and participation in the WTO and set very different negotiating criteria for new agreements. The House version already has 130 co-sponsors. It should spark a vigorous debate on why the old trade rules just aren’t good enough anymore and what kinds of arrangements need to be put in place to create jobs and address hunger and poverty in the global north and south.
That’s the kind of discussion that should be happening this week in Geneva.
