A telling quote from this NYT piece on NAFTA:
The
potential demise of the trade deal prompted supportive messages from
labor unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United Steelworkers,
as well as some Democrats.“Any
trade proposal that makes multinational corporations nervous is a good
sign that it’s moving in the right direction for workers,” said Senator
Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio.
According to the National Journal, Brown shares a nine-way tie for most liberal Senator.
For more on anti-market bias, see The Myth of the Rational Voter, now reluctantly enjoying its ten-year anniversary…
READER COMMENTS
Hazel Meade
Oct 18 2017 at 6:03pm
Should I be getting worried that the US might actually pull out of NAFTA? Because that would be a disaster.
S D
Oct 19 2017 at 4:37am
There is a similar situation in the UK right now, but playing out differently.
The citizens have voted for Brexit and one version would mean leaving the European Union’s customs union and single market. This is a free trade zone, although with a lot more integration than NAFTA.
However the head of the UK trade union umbrella body has explicitly called for the UK to stay in the customs union and single market, saying that it represents the best outcome for her members.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/11/brexit-workers-rights-best-secured-by-staying-in-single-market-says-tuc-chief
Thomas Boyle
Oct 19 2017 at 7:17am
Whatever those nine senators are, “liberal” is not the word to describe them.
Philo
Oct 19 2017 at 9:18am
Brown seems to be a zero-sum thinker: if we leave the economy to the market, the clever traders will get rich at the expense of the rest of us. (So successful market participants must be selfish brutes, in contrast to the rest of us community-minded good guys. By the way, this thinking is part of the basis for anti-semitism.)
Danno
Oct 19 2017 at 5:10pm
For his first campaign for the Senate, Brown wrote a book,Myths of Free Trade: Why U.S. Trade Policy has Failed. He has always wanted to keep people poor.
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