The Senate finally did something intelligent on trade...
President Obama suffered a defeat at the hands of his own party on Tuesday, as Senate Democrats blocked a key component of the president's trade agenda.
After fierce lobbying on both sides of the issue, the bid to start debate -- on expanding the president's authority to negotiate trade deals -- failed on a 52-45 vote. It needed 60 votes to advance ... "What we just saw here is pretty shocking," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, accusing congressional Democrats of standing with "special interests."
Cut the crap Mitch.
The problem with these trade deals in general, whether it be NAFTA, the most-favored nation status granted to China and others, is that when they involve "developing" or "third world" nations they simply enable wage and environmental arbitrage.
It is expensive, in relative terms, to avoid poisoning the air, water and land. There is little that is cheaper than simply running a pipe to the nearest body of water and dumping your toxic waste in it; essentially every means of treating that waste to make it safe, or recycling it is more expensive. All things being equal if you're a manufacturer that uses toxic materials (and most do) if you can put your plant where nobody will stop you from dumping the toxic waste, you will.
Likewise, if the prevailing wage for jobs that are primarily manual labor and do not involve a high degree of skill is a nickel an hour in whatever the local currency is, while our minimum wage is a couple hundred times higher, all things being equal if you can put your plant where the prevailing wage is a nickel an hour you will.





















