Briefs

Iran
Anybody who was paying attention back in 2003 should be experiencing an ominous sense of déjà vu about now.  One big difference is that the news media are a lot less likely to be suckered today than they were last time, so Bolton's regime change plan for Iran shouldn't go over quite as well as the plan for regime change in Iraq did.   Given the suffering US policy has created for the Iranian people, it's hard to imagine how any democratically elected government in Iran could be friendly to the US.

Trade War
Congress is less partisan about Tr*mp's tariffs than it is about most issues, although Republican opponents are not especially vocal about it.  It makes perfect political sense that a Rust Belt Democrat would back the tariffs, but I suspect some other Democratic supporters just want Our President to crash the economy in time for 2020.  The main sticking point in negotiations seems to be US insistence on changes to Chinese law, an embarrassing compromise of Chinese sovereignty.  Such changes hardly seem necessary: Xi is just as likely to ignore Chinese law as Tr*mp is to ignore American law — but a lot less likely to be called on it.

Venezuela
While plenty of Venezuelans – especially the more affluent – would love to dump Maduro, they don't seem to be especially enthusiastic about Guidó either.  It's unclear just what kind of compromise Swedish diplomats hope to facilitate, but it won't be an easy task.  Any deal will have to satisfy two belligerent incompetents: Maduro and Tr*mp.  Guidó doesn't count anymore.

A Wrinkle in Trade?

While the news media and the markets are captivated by Our President's current game of chicken with China, the US has advanced a very unorthodox idea at the NAFTA renegotiation — and it's a surprisingly good idea.

To avoid US tariffs on automobiles produced in Mexico, manufacturers there would be obliged to pay their assembly line workers $15 an hour.  That is twice the US federal minimum wage, and considerably more than starting salaries at non-union assembly lines in the southern United States. The $15 figure is just an opening gambit, of course: nobody really wants to see underpaid Alabamians sneaking across the border for better-paying jobs in Mexico.  Nevertheless, demanding better pay for foreign workers could be a more intelligent approach to both balance-of-trade and unauthorized immigration concerns.

Labor standards have been a part of trade negotiations for many decades, but usually receive short shrift when agreements are finalized, and seldom are enforced.  Negotiated by and for multinational corporations, they rarely go beyond banning slave or convict labor — not an especially high bar.  (The TPP would have included somewhat higher standards, had it been ratified, but that ship has sailed.)

Globalization has lifted tens of millions out of abject poverty in the developing world — at least in countries like China, where not all the newly generated wealth was co-opted by plutocrats.  If the Tr*mp administration advances a new paradigm that benefits the working poor around the world, it will be ironic — but also very welcome.

Free Trade

A lot of people are bloviating about the evils of free trade.  Not me.  I'm not against free trade — just the agreements, with particular emphasis on those who negotiate the agreements.

The negotiators for the TPP and TTIP are overwhelmingly drawn from the corporate sector, and the regulations they negotiate overwhelmingly favor large corporations.  Usually there are a few pages about "labor standards" in the encyclopedic final documents, but benefits for workers are minimal and, even to the extent they exist, rarely enforced.

Workers guaranteed a living wage in Asia or Latin America or Africa do not offer the same degree of unfair competition to American workers as the quasi-slave labor forces that make out-migration of American jobs so lucrative for the world's plutocrats.  Opposition to the TTIP agreement comes primarily from European labor unions, who fear that the trade agreement could drag European labor standards down to the significantly inferior North American level.

Globalization has proceeded to a point where it cannot be undone, and moving away from greater world trade would have severe economic consequences across the globe.  What is lacking, though, is any genuine effort to use trade for the benefit of ordinary human beings, not just big business.

Fast-track

I was pleasantly surprised when Democrats in the House blocked Obama's route to fast-track trade negotiation authority for the TPP.  Maybe I needn't have been quite so surprised.  After all, what had he ever done for them?

I've already explained my own reservations with the TPP here, so I won't go into them again.  All I can add at this time is that the more that's emerged from the shroud of secrecy, the less I like it — and I was especially pissed off by Obama's overtly personal attacks on Elizabeth Warren.

Now, we have to wait for Hillary, whose "people" must be desperately measuring and weighing public opinion and the views of her corporate backers, since she rarely seems to have opinions or principles of her own.  If Hillary backs Obama, I expect enough votes will swing to saddle us with all the unpleasant surprises certain to be contained within the terms of the TPP.  After all, many current members of Congress won't want to get on the "wrong side" of the "next president."

Sadly, I suspect she'll back the president, taking union support for granted.  The unions won't have much of a choice if she's running against, say, Scott Walker.