A More Fine Grained Anti Foreign Bias

Yglesias, responding to Bryan Caplan’s thesis of “anti foreign bias” thinks that Democratic trade policy, which may seem antagonistic to the expansion of free trade, will actually, if implemented, keep up the volume of foreign trade:

Such a policy would, it seems, entail essentially unrestricted importation of goods from Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan plus maybe a few other places…

The most trade-skeptical positions I’ve heard outlined suggest either that there should be no new trade deals until a larger welfare state is established, or else that no new trade deals should be signed unless they include rigorous labor and environmental standards. Perhaps this would lead to a situation in which President X presides over an administration that implements no new trade deals whatsoever. Even were that to happen, the US economy would still be substantially more open to foreign imports than it was 15 years ago before NAFTA or the Uruguay Round of GATT.

I don’t think Yglesias can quite have his cake and eat it too here.  The trade skeptics say they just want a better safety net, more environmental and labor standards and all that jazz.  This view, free trade good but only good under x,y,z circumstances is a view that is held mostly, by it seems, TAP writers and editors.  The actual meat of the opposition to foreign trade, people like Matt Taibbi, David Sirota and Lou Dobbs are all so invested in demagoguing against trade as a positional stance that it seems unlikely that any safety net or labor and environmental standards will ever satisfy them.  They’re just unhappy about the fact we’re trading with countries with low wages at all.

Additionally, I’d argue that there is more of an anti-foreign bias against, how should I say this, poorer and darker countries, than against Matt’s examples of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, Britain etc.  We’ve had mass trade with these countries forever, so we’ve basically won over the skeptics, people get more antsy when we trade with poorer, darker countries and this is where Caplan’s bias may in fact kick in.  This isn’t so much racism as it is that we’re just expanding to these new countries now, as opposed to these countries we’ve been trading with at high volume for a long time.

Yglesias’ “Social Democratic” free trader just isn’t responsive to the institutional forces who are just anti trade as a political stance or will always support various tariffs and protections to suit their specific interests.  For example, the hypothetical free trader who supports the Kucinich strategy is draining the political swamp for the small adjustments to the trade system to make it for free and less likely to be gamed by people.  Would someone with the Yglesias trade stance make hay over the tariff on sugar ethanol, when their griping about the social effects of free trade agreements provides ammunition for those who want to manipulate the trade rules to protect certain industries?

I, for one, support a bigger, better welfare state because I think it’s the only way to maintain political support for more open trade, so maybe our disagreement isn’t all that substantive.