The Democrats and Trade

Fareed Zakaria takes the Democrats to task in his latest Newsweek column for drifting toward protectionism. But he offers precious few examples of how Democrats are actually "gioing seriously awry" on free trade; all he comes up with are the vague worries of Asian government officials. But since when do Asian government officials understand U.S. politics better than we do ourselves? And since when can we count foreign politicians to have America's interests first in mind?

The fact is Zakaria has zero evidence to back up his claim that the Dems are turning protectionist. But he does have one piece of evidence that suggests the opposite:

Last week house speaker Nancy Pelosi and congress-man Charles Rangel showed genuine leadership by making a deal with the Bush administration to ease the passage of new trade pacts.

This is the opener of Zakaria's column! He then proceeds to utterly ignore this very real indicator that the Dems are pragmatic and centrist on trade, and goes into a boilerplate Thomas Friedman-esque listing of the benefits of trade.

Anyone who wants to read serious, scholarly discussions of the possible benefits and costs of international trade (and there are some of both) should start with this back-and-forth between several respected economists. Those with the time and energy to really educate themselves on the trade issue should absolutely do so.

But those who don't have the time to pore over the differing implications of the Ricardo and Heckscher-Olin trade models should not simply accept the Friedman/Zakaria model of "Republicans good on trade, Democrats bad." This is simply a continuation of the conservative line of the past three decades - that Democrats are anti-free-market and therefore not to be trusted.

Don't believe it. Look at the evidence - Clinton expanded free trade more than any president in history. And now Pelosi and Rangel - hardly known for being "conservative Dems" - have, with zero fuss, signed a very reasonable law that opens up the field for future trade deals. Does this sound like the party of protectionism to you?

No. It sounds like the party of stability and pragmatic centrism. A little of which definitely wouldn't hurt our country, especially now. If Fareed Zakaria has any evidence to the contrary, let him go ahead and show it.