We're all globalists now: free trader A, B, or C?

Dougherty, Michael Brendan

WARNING: campaigning in the Rust Belt may cause headaches. Other known side effects include pandering fever, severe bouts of self-contradiction, and a temporary lack of faith in free trade.

In 2008, the candidates from both parties entered the race as free traders. Then they ran into voters from the deindustrializing Midwest. First the Republicans faltered in Michigan, then the Democrats in Ohio.

Republicans were caught between lobbies like the Club for Growth, which supports lowering trade barriers, and the opinion of grassroots Republicans. In October, the Wall Street Journal found that six in ten Republicans "agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports."

Before his campaign stalled on Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney was the life of the corporate party. His success as head of a private equity firm made him the beau ideal of entrepreneurship in the global economy. Last July, while campaigning in Florida, Romney said, "trade lifts all nations that participate" and called for new free-trade deals to help alleviate poverty in Latin America. But Power-Point presentations on the advantages of free trade for Hondurans have no appeal to American autoworkers losing their jobs. Needing a win in Michigan, a state with a rising unemployment rate, Romney qualified his creed: "I strongly support free trade, but free trade has to be fair in both directions." The man who claimed "Washington is broken" found faith in central planning. He promised, "In the first 100 days I'm in office I will personally bring together industry, labor, congressional, and state leaders, and together we will develop a plan to rebuild America's automotive leadership." He filled his rhetoric with baffling contradictions. "The plan is going to have to include increases in funding for automotive related research as well as new tax benefits," he predicted. Despite the promised largesse, Romney continued, "Washington should not be a benefactor, but it can and must be a partner."

John McCain, who recently admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he "doesn't really understand economics," shared his limited understanding with voters in ailing Michigan: "Here's a little straight talk.... jobs that have left Michigan are not coming back." McCain sweetened this tough medicine with a dollop of inapt analogy, telling ex-autoworkers, "It wasn't government's job to spend millions to save buggy-whip factories and haberdashers when cars replaced carriages and men stopped wearing hats." Of course, those carriages were replaced by American automakers, not foreign competitors.

Understanding that he can't win on a platform of job losses, McCain suggested he would bribe the victims of globalization: "We should give these displaced workers who move to a new job a few years of supplement to their earnings so that the impact of their economic dislocation is not so severe." Translation: I won't protect your manufacturing jobs from foreign competition; I'll just subsidize your re-employment stocking shelves with foreign goods at Wal-Mart. Welcome to the service economy.

Having wrapped up the nomination, McCain got to skip Ohio during primary season. The Democrats were not so lucky. Since Bush took office, America has lost nearly one-fifth of its manufacturing jobs--about three million. Nearly one in ten of those losses occurred in Ohio. Some 80 percent of Ohio voters tell pollsters that free trade is destroying American jobs.

The desire for protection has electoral consequences. In 2006, Democrat Sherrod Brown defeated Republican incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine in the Buckeye State, largely by criticizing DeWine's support of NAFTA.

Hillary Clinton, whose husband negotiated NAFTA, engaged in some revisionist history. During a debate in Cleveland, she claimed, "You know, I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning." Of course, this is not true. Bloomberg News reported that in 1998 Clinton lavished praise on corporations for "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." In her 2003 memoir, Living History, Clinton heaped laurels on her husband's "successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA." And Tim Russert would not let her forget that on "Meet the Press" in 2004 she opined, "I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America." Liberal columnist David Sirota points out that "her lead Wall Street fundraiser told reporters that Clinton remains 'committed' to NAFTA's 'free' trade structure."

But Clinton told Ohio voters, "I would immediately have a trade timeout, and I would take that time to try to fix NAFTA by making it clear that we'll have core labor and environmental standards in the agreement." No one quite understands what a "timeout" in trade means. Regardless, Clinton's plan for displaced autoworkers involves turning them into environmentalists: "I helped to pass legislation to begin a training program for green collar jobs." At campaign stops throughout Ohio, Clinton touted her vision: "I want to see people throughout Ohio being trained to do the work that will put solar panels on roofs, install wind turbines ..." She didn't mention that the solar panels are manufactured in Asia.

But Clinton survived her contradictions and missteps on NAFTA--if only because Barack Obama blundered so badly. Going into Ohio, Obama positioned himself as the leading NAFTA critic. He told voters that he would "use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage" in a necessary renegotiation of the trade pact. But the Obama campaign, which promised to tell voters, "not what they want to hear--but the truths they need to hear," got caught whispering sweet nothings. While Obama hammered Clinton on trade, one of his top advisers was reassuring Canada's government that he was just joshing Midwesterners. A memo written by Joseph DeMora, an employee of Canada's consulate in Chicago, revealed that Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee "acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign," but "he cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

Suddenly Obama's above-it-all politics came crashing down around him. His campaign issued a denial, then conceded that there had been a meeting but said that it signaled nothing about Obama's position. When DeMora's memo was released, the campaign fell silent. Clinton's camp then hammered the Illinois senator over what it called "NAFTA-gate." Late-deciding voters in Ohio overwhelmingly voted for Clinton, giving her a stay of execution.

But the Ohio primary did not end the debate on NAFTA and the loss of manufacturing jobs. The next big state in the primary schedule is Pennsylvania. While areas around Philadelphia have remained in good economic shape, former industrial hubs like Bethlehem and Pittsburgh have replaced their factories with gambling casinos. Erie has lost almost all of its manufacturing.

Voters angry that their high-wage jobs have been downsized, near-shored, off-shored, outsourced, and otherwise integrated into the global economy may very well determine the general election winner in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. And the "giant sucking sound" of American manufacturing jobs cannot be drowned out by the patronizing rhetoric and insincere placations of the major campaigns.

Rust Belt voters have one job-opening: Seeking a candidate who offers something other than globalization as usual. So far, no applications have been filed.