Free trade fisticuffs



By Josephine Hearn

Is Lou Dobbs killing free trade? Some free trade advocates are starting to think so, and they’re contemplating ways to fight back.

The free trade agenda has hit the slow lane. Particularly since the controversial 2005 passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement — and even before that — Congress has been reluctant to OK new deals, especially larger ones.

Some of the lawmakers who once backed the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico now say NAFTA was a bad idea. The vast majority of the public believes trade doesn’t create jobs.

“Today free trade is in free fall,” writes the centrist Democrat group Third Way in a report entitled “Why Lou Dobbs Is Winning,” to be released Wednesday.

The report’s authors target Dobbs, CNN’s resident populist anchor and commentator, as typical of a growing backlash against trade. And they fault the free trade community for allowing public perception of their efforts to become so negative.

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“Our policies and arguments in defense of trade have stayed static in the last few decades — even as the world around us has changed dramatically,” write Anne Kim, John Lageson and Jim Kessler of Third Way.

They contend that free traders have fallen short both in public relations and policies.

They have failed to sell their ideas to the public, and they have yet to find policies to ensure that the middle class receives the benefits of increased trade.

In the coming months, Third Way plans to issue more reports suggesting ways to confront these problems.

The first report was an admission that the current strategies employed by free trade advocates aren’t working and a call to the free trade community to reexamine itself.

“We all have to begin to speak differently about trade, how it benefits the economy and foreign policy, how it helps Americans and people abroad,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley, a moderate New York Democrat who will help unveil the report at a news conference Wednesday along with Rep. Melissa L. Bean (D-Ill.). “There needs to be a new discussion about it.”

The report points out several areas where the public is not responding to free trade arguments. Free traders argue that the policies create job, but the public believes free trade destroys jobs. They argue that trade benefits consumers, but the public believes it benefits corporations more.

The report also argues that free trade advocates lack a larger political and economic vision on which to anchor their policies.

The fight against communism or post-World War II peacekeeping no longer serve as a driving force for their agenda.

They also need to find new policies that mitigate the anxiety the middle class feels about the changing economy, the report says.

Free trade advocates base their arguments on economic models rather than values, a critical flaw, the study’s authors contend.

“‘Fair’ traders fight with values; free traders fight with data. This is like bringing a knife to a gunfight,” the authors write. “As a consequence, our arguments are elitist, our numbers are unconvincing, and Americans don’t think the economic benefits of trade are worth the social and moral costs.”

The House is expected to approve a small free trade agreement with Peru on Wednesday, but other deals remain stalled.

Dobbs could not be immediately reached for comment. But he was on a familiar tear Sunday evening. Confronting a question about consumer goods manufactured overseas, he slammed free traders.

“It’s because a bunch of idiots believe in free trade, and they don’t care about the high cost of free trade and what it’s doing to middle-class families and working men and women,” Dobbs said, growing ever more cantankerous.

Another anchor tried to steer him back to the topic at hand.

“But all that aside, then why can’t we — ” she ventured.

“Aside?!” he barked. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you can’t put that aside. That’s pretty important.”

Those exchanges make people at Third Way cringe. Free trade has enormous benefits, they argue, but advocates need to find a new message and new policies to ensure everyone gains.

“Don’t know how we would get there yet,” said Kim, one of the study’s authors. But “that’s the perception and reality we need to correct.”