President Barack Obama has proposed and signed the largest spending in history (the stimulus), regulated the pay of banks, called for dramatic government intervention into our health care and energy sectors, proposed to raise taxes, created at least two new mortgage bailouts, and called for many other subsidies, regulations, and mandates. But when it comes to free trade, he and his Trade Representative have shot down the protectionists in his party with the terse dismissal: “We can’t stop trade.”
That Obama line, relayed to our Susan Ferrichio by a Democratic source, combined with USTR Ron Kirk’s recent declaration that Obama doesn’t want to renegotiate NAFTA, deflates the hopes of all the protectionist or “fair trade” Democrats who had rallied around Obama’s campaign-season anti-NAFTA rhetoric.
Aside from leaving the anti-NAFTA crowd feeling betrayed, Obama’s pro-NAFTA stance, when considered together with his unprecedented intervention in the domestic economy, seems to reinforce the bipartisan Washington dogma of “subsidies good, trade barriers bad” that I discussed in a March column.
