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1. There's an interesting vote coming up soon that is going to scramble partisan lines. It's on the World Trade Organization, the global super court that encourages offshoring, harms the environment, and undermines resiliency in our supply chains. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-does-a-hospital-monopoly-want
2. Right now there's a debate over globalization. In D.C., policymakers conflate what's good for Wall Street - offshoring of jobs, pollution, monopolies - with global cooperation over climate change and pandemics. Trump adds another wrinkle, a nationalist xenophobic stance.
3. The post-1995 globalization era is over. There are export bans of medical equipment throughout the world, and domestic bailouts to structure economies. Lots of violations of the spirit and probably the letter of trade law. But the G20 has agreed to ignore them.
4. The big question is what comes next? Wall Street doesn't want any changes. They want a race to the bottom for labor standards. They want to place labor in authoritarian countries so workers have no bargaining power. Supporting the WTO means going on that course.
5. One of the more unorthodox politicians in DC, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, is forcing a Senate vote on the Wall Street globalization frame, the World Trade Organization. Wall Street Republicans will oppose him. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/07/josh-hawley-us-withdraw-wto-243681
6. The vote isn't really binding. It's just a resolution, an expression of views, not an actual attempt to take the U.S. out of the WTO. But it matters because it signals where policymakers are on our trading relationships as they get renegotiated.
7. The WTO is heavily corporatist in its orientation. For instance it ruled for big packers against small farmers in their attempt to have country of origin labeling on meat. https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/release-cool-sanctions-december-2015.pdf
8. The U.S. has lost 93% of the cases against it at the World Trade Organization when they involve public interest laws, things like pollution controls, consumer protection laws, and so forth. Protecting the WTO means protecting big business. https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/WTO-Disputes-Summary-November-2019-FINAL.pdf
9. There are many logistical problems with the WTO. Importantly, Hawley is calling not for isolationism, but back to the post-1945 New Deal era system of trade among democracies. That's a debate we need to have.
10. Now opposing the WTO can sound like raw nationalism. But it isn't. Global cooperation on pandemics, security, climate change, etc are one thing. Global cooperation to offshore jobs for Wall Street are another. The rhetoric on these issues sounds the same but it's not.
11. In fact the traditional politicians trying to protect American jobs from offshoring are populist Democrats. Under Obama it was populist Democrats who resisted the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Under Clinton it was populist Democrats who resisted NAFTA and China PNTR.
12. Bernie Sanders in 2000 was a leader in opposing the entrance of China into the World Trade Organization. He was right. Since China entered the WTO America lost millions of jobs and tens of thousands of factories. Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown opposed the TPP.
13. During the Presidential debates in 2008, 2016, and 2020, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden all said they'd reorient trade away from its neoliberal moorings and help workers. The WTO is a fulcrum for that decision.
14. The failure of Democrats to actually make good on their promises to protect workers is why certain industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania flipped to Trump in 2016. Democratic leaning voters were sending a message. Enough offshoring.
15. Yet in the Trump era a lot of Democrats today cannot actually tell the difference between the Paris Agreement (good!), closing the borders to immigrants (xenophobic) and the World Trade Organization (corporatist!). It all just sounds nationalistic.
16. But voters can tell the difference between offshoring jobs and other kinds of foreign policy choices. It's critical for Democrats to make good on their argument that they want to protect America but reject raw nationalism. That means supporting workers, not the WTO.
17. There are many elites who will use fancy words about the WTO and scream about American exceptionalism and Trump. But most of them don't know much about trade or trade law. It's why they were surprised we couldn't make things in a pandemic. They are fools.
18. Also, WTO officials violate their own rules all the time to help corporate interests and subvert labor all over the world, including in the U.S. It's time to stop playing along with the ruse that global cooperation means helping Wall Street. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-does-a-hospital-monopoly-want
19. This election is going to be about China. Trump will want to use xenophobic nationalism while painting Dems as globalist bankers. Democrats shouldn't let him do that. They need to talk about cooperating globally, and protecting workers here.
20. This WTO vote matters. If the Dems support the WTO, they will end up legitimizing Trump's claim that left-leaning global cooperation is a ruse for supporting corporatist globalist interests. But if Dems vote against the WTO, they can claim to stand for America, and the world.
21. To be clear this vote doesn’t pull the US out of the WTO. It just sends a signal that the corporatist framework trade policymakers use must change.
