The Dem's Free Trade Two Step

According to the Financial Times, an EU minister has blasted the Dem's protectionist stance.

“It is irresponsible to be pretending to people you can erect new protection, new tariff barriers around your economy in this 21st century global age and still succeed in sustaining peoples’ living standards and jobs. It is a mirage and they know it.”

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“It is very irresponsible in my view to pretend to people that we can disengage from international trade, we can create barriers around our economy and then be surprised when people retaliate by doing the same,” he said. “It is going to lead us into a vicious spiral of beggar-thy-neighbour policies which will take us decades back in terms of trade growth.”

Being a keen observer of politics, the Dem's protectionist stance is among the most annoying and frustrating things to watch. That's because it is combined with high minded rhetoric about how they will restore our standing in the world. The Democrats are always keen to mention any negative world opinion of our current foreign policy stances. Yet, they seem to be oblivious to the universal world opinion against their protectionist stance.

What is worse is that the public has really not held them to account for the blatant hypocrisy they have shown. The Democrats want to have it every which way. On the one hand, they will spend the entire campaign blasting the foreign policy of the current administration. They will proclaim that they will restore our standing in the world. Then, they will pander to the unions and frustrated manufatcuring workers about protectionist free trade policy.

Even though free trade is the single most important foreign policy issue, they will still continue to maintain that Bush's foreign policy was atrocious and they will restore order. The media, for the most part, will not hold them accountable for this brazen two step. They will shamelessly make each an issue and try and score points on both. The fact that protectionist free trade policy will naturally lead to contentious foreign policy will never be connected by the masses. Even though the looming disaster of their free trade policy on foreign policy is real, that won't become much of a campaign issue.