Free trade is a huge benefit if you are a Walmart shopper. All those microwave ovens, lamps, sneakers, and other stuff available for a relative pittance. It’s a tragedy if you are a domestic manufacturer or worker attempting to compete with cheap labor and subsidized Chinese manufacturers pouring those goods onto supermarket shelves. Consumers are dispersed and unaware of their interest in free trade; workers and manufacturers know their interest in protection. So freer trade is always a difficult political proposition.

More so now than ever here in the U.S. For one thing, President Obama has no interest in jeopardizing the electoral chances of congressmen dependent on trade union support by trying to push through the stalled trade deals now languishing somewhere in the administration’s bureaucracy. For another, a battle has flared within the Republican party over possible renewal of the Export-Import Bank, an institution established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt “to assist in financing the export of U.S. goods and services” by providing credits exporters need to tide over the time between shipment and receipt of payment, and by guaranteeing the credit of foreign buyers. An indication of how much politics has changed in America is the fact that until the emergence of the Tea Party, the Bank’s authorization was renewed 16 consecutive times with almost no controversy.