Listening to the Democrats talk about trade on the campaign trail and in Congress, you might conclude that the party is monolithically skeptical about the merits of new trade agreements.
As they campaigned in Ohio and elsewhere, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tripped over themselves in competing to see who could denounce NAFTA and other trade initiatives in the harshest terms. Meanwhile, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi re-wrote established rules on handling proposed trade agreements by shelving the agreement the Bush administration signed with our South American ally Colombia.
In a welcome dissent in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, C. Fred Bergsten, founder and director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, sounds a warning against “The Democrats’ Dangerous Trade Games.”
Bergsten has long-standing ties to the Democratic side of the aisle, having served in Jimmy Carter’s administration as assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury during 1977–81.
Bergsten pulls no punches in his op-ed this morning:
[O]ur venerable House of Representatives, in the context of the Colombia agreement, has recklessly changed the rules for congressional action on trade legislation. By rejecting long-settled procedures that prevented congressional sidetracking of trade deals negotiated by presidents, the House has hamstrung U.S. trade policy and created the gravest threat to the global trading system in decades.
By effectively killing “fast track” procedures that guarantee a yes-or-no vote on trade agreements within 90 days, lawmakers in Washington, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have destroyed the credibility of the U.S. as a reliable negotiating partner.
The op-ed is well worth a read, especially among Democrats who are feeling uneasy about the direction of their party on trade.
