Creating a broader context for the coming debate on trade and globalization

The Washington Post weighs in with an editorial detailing the victories Democrats won in the new bi-partisan trade deal (read our statement here). 

While we should all be pleased with the spirit of this deal, it would be advisable for those wanting to garner votes to create a bigger context for the coming debate.  The data is very clear here - in this decade globalization has been very good for those with capital and for American corporations, but has not been so good for American workers and families. 

A vital strategic goal for those of us who believe in the benefits of liberalization must be to help our elected leaders come up with an agenda that successfully reverses the sluggish job growth and weak income and wage growth of our time.  To believe that the American people will accept the current way the economy is unfolding is niave.  Poll after poll, and the core economic data show that for about two-thirds of all Americans the economy is not what they want it to be.  They are losing faith that this century's global economy has the capacity to give them the opportunity and upward mobility all generations of Americans have to come to expect.  Making the American economy work for more Americans is one of the most important governing challenges of our time, and one NDN has been relentlessly focused on for the past several years in our Globalization Initiative.  

So in the days ahead I think it would be wise for those looking to build public support for this new trade policy to talk about what their strategy is bring greater prosperity to our workers and kids.  We've offered many ideas - raise the minimum wage, reform our immigration system, put a laptop in every backback, bring broadband to all Americans, fix our health care system so all Americans can have adequate insurance and good care, give our workers the option of card check, adopt the Speaker's innovation agenda, significantly increase funding for the teaching of science and math in all schools - the list goes on and on.  And it is time for once and for all to stop throwing out "TAA - trade adjustment assistance" as a sop that everyone knows isn't an adequate response to the realities we face today. 

The conversation about trade cannot happen in a vacuum.  Unlike the 1990s, globalization is neither seen to be, or is, working for a majority of Americans.  If the American people and their elected leaders are being asked to support greater liberalization, they must be told in clear terms what the strategy is to help them achieve the American Dream in a much more competitive age.  These conversations need to be linked.  And those looking to build public support for further liberalization need to get serious about offering not just a new trade policy, but a comprehensive economic strategy for America in the 21st century that helps ensure that globalization works for all Americans.