Is Global Trade for the 1%, or the Global Poor?

Provocative stuff from Jonathan Chait:

The argument for restricting this trade rests on protecting the interests of the working class in rich countries at the expense of the global poor who are taking their jobs. In an interview last summer, Ezra Klein pushed Sanders into more or less conceding that his trade plans would look out for American workers at the expense of poor workers overseas. “I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent-paying jobs, have education, have health care, have nutrition for their people,” Sanders replied, when asked how he would balance the two. “That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that, as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers, which has already gone down very significantly.”

This is the meat of the debate between free-trade Democrats and protectionist ones. On the one side, free traders arguing that trade lifts up the global poor and reduces barriers to exports. On the other, an argument that we need to lift foreign workers up to our standard of living for their labor. It's a rather straight-forward debate.

Chait goes further in though:

Sanders argues that the correct response to the system that is allegedly failing rich and poor countries alike is “real change,” stripped of nativist sentiments: “we do not need change based on the demagogy, bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment that punctuated so much of the Leave campaign’s rhetoric — and is central to Donald J. Trump’s message.” But Trump’s message, for all its demagoguery and racism, is at least connected to a factually coherent analysis of how trade works, as Annie Lowrey points out. Trump is arguing that trade deals have helped foreign countries and screwed American workers. He’s straightforward about his intention to screw over foreign countries.

Sanders, on the other hand, wants to pretend that a policy that screws over the global poor can be undertaken not only without overt bigotry, but that it will also benefit the global poor themselves. Between the two, Trump’s case is the more realistic one.

And here in lies the provocative part of this- Trump at least gets global trade, while Bernie and his supporters don't. I don't know that I buy it- a certain amount of rhetorical ignorance has to be allowed to any policy point. With that said, Trump's appeal does get the zero-sum nature of this issue- he casts it as "American workers vs. the global working poor." Sanders is trying to cast this as a "workers of the world vs. the rich" debate. Trump's case is the factually accurate one. It is also the factually dangerous one. It promotes xenophobia, hyper-nationalism, and frankly, racism. Bernie's perhaps does over-simplify who should be aligned with who, but nails the fact that really, no worker should be exploited just because of where they live. I think Chait hits on some important points here. I just also think he's boiling the issue down further than we really should.