Obama + Rahm = Awesome
The one part of Barack Obama’s speech that worried me a little was his insistent that all races could be unified against the threat of evil CEOs outsourcing jobs. Never mind the irony in saying that the best way to heal over divisions is to collectively scapegoat foreigners – not to mention that outsourcing and trade are only a small part of job loss – it seemed as if Obama’s political imagination was limited to the possibility that a ethnically homogeneous society could only unite around another foreign other.
Well, in comes Rahm Emanuel with a WSJ op-ed arguing for a “new social contract with America’s workers” that would put to rest anxiety about trade. This is the language that I’d like to hear Obama use. For many on the left-wing of the party, as well as for rust belt Democrats, trade is said to play a disproportionate role in the economic evils afflicting the middle class. This is despite the middle class squeeze – the cost of health care and education rising while median incomes stagnate and shrink – accelerating during the Bush administration, with no huge break through trade agreements or large increases in foreign trade. It’s just economic nonsense to say that free trade agreements have played a proximate, or even a noticeable role – especially compared to other factors – in the economic malaise that many Americans find themselves in.
Another bad thing about focusing on trade is that it drains political energy for actually thinking about real policy solutions to alleviate inequality and stagnating middle class incomes. If you’re obsessed with NAFTA, that’s less energy spent on health care, education, universal savings, green jobs or any policy that will actually help improve the prospects of the middle class. Not to mention the fact that trade benefits everyone and also has salutary geopolitcal effects.
The problem is that many free trade advocates are Republicans who don’t really care for large scale programs to improve economic security and oppurtunity. But there are plenty of Democrats out there who really want to make the comprehensive free trade case. What’s nice about Emanuel’s piece is that it puts the cooled trade rhetoric and “new social contract” rhetoric literally side-by-side. It’s this type of synthesis, where we don’t blame trade or foreigners for our problems and instead collaborate on policy solutions that Obama (and Clinton for that matter) ought to be using.
