Let trade/jobs debate begin

The Democratic presidential primary last week in Wisconsin had two clear outcomes. It reduced the field to John Kerry and John Edwards. And it brought the issue of trade and jobs to the center of the presidential campaign.

Much of the talk so far amounts to cheap populism, appealing to people’s fears. All the candidates can be nailed for inconsistency, at best, and hypocrisy, at worst, on this issue. But amid the overheated rhetoric, there are some real ideas beginning to gel. The problem in this election is to make sure the ideas get heard.

The Democratic candidates and the White House are well aware that the election may turn on this issue. A handful of states have been hit particularly hard by job loss, Wisconsin among them, as well as Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa and Tennessee. In all these states, the margin of victory for either Gore or Bush was very narrow, and job loss alone could be enough to swing that state to a Democrat.

That would explain why Kerry and Edwards are now sparring about who is tougher on trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. It would also explain why the White House is squirming over the comments of the White House economic adviser about the “long run” benefits of outsourcing American jobs to India and China.

When it comes to trade at election time, you can pretty much throw principle out the window. Kerry is a free trade advocate who now assails “Benedict Arnold” corporations for taking jobs overseas. Edwards voted for trade deals with China but now trumpets his opposition to NAFTA, which was voted on before he joined the Senate.

Bush, a rhetorical free trader, shamelessly slapped on protectionist measures for the steel industry to garner votes in states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia (measures withdrawn when the World Trade Organization ruled them illegal). More recently, his administration negotiated a free trade agreement with Australia that maintained price controls to protect sugar producers in key states such as Florida and Minnesota.

Playing politics with trade is nothing new. As a reporter in Tokyo, I watched Dick Gephardt try to run his campaign for president in 1988 almost purely on bashing Japan — complete with angry denunciations of the Japanese delivered in Tokyo to a room full of American reporters. Gephardt’s campaign fell flat, and the Democrats need to heed that lesson.

Put crudely, simply appealing to people’s fears is not a winning strategy. There is a tremendous well of anxiety out there, to be sure — I saw it last year when I wrote a series of columns about outsourcing to India. Real jobs have been lost by real people who see no prospect of getting them back.

But people want more than just a shared fear — they want hope for the future. And putting up a wall around this country is not an idea that many Americans really believe will work. This is evident in Silicon Valley, where job loss has been huge — and continues to be the case — but where there is also a strong support for the idea that our future depends on an expanding global economy. Jobs have been created here by the markets of Asia, while they are also being lost there as well.

There are four sets of ideas circulating now on the trade-jobs issue:

l Walls — laws to stop the outsourcing of work that is funded by state or federal governments are the most prominent example of these.

l Competition — measures to promote job growth here, such as closing tax loopholes that promote offshoring and tax incentives to keep manufacturing at home. Restoring funding for research and development efforts at our world-standard university system.

l Fair trade — vigorously ensure that all markets are open, such as taking on Chinese subsidies for their chip makers or dumping of cheap furniture. Demand that new trade pacts ensure labor standards.

l Safety net — Helping those who lose from globalization such as expanding the Trade Adjustment Assistance law, which provides compensation for workers hurt by trade and globalization, to service workers, such as computer programmers.

I don’t find much to embrace in the walls category. But there are plenty of other good ideas to promote competition, ensure fair trade and protect American workers. Let the debate begin, and let’s hope the candidates can offer reasons for optimism about the future.


Daniel Sneider is foreign affairs columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. His e-mail address

is dsneider@mercurynews.com.