Something righteous happened re: trade and labor

It's been a long, long time coming, and hopefully there will be a lot more of it.

Last week, something revolutionary happened in the history of U.S. trade policy. The government used trade law to help labor, not to help capital.

Government switching sides gives a whole new political meaning to globalization. Global trade, with the right politics and policies, doesn’t have to produce a race to the bottom. It can even start a race to the top. Who knew?

The specific case involved an auto parts company called Tridonex, located in the border town of Matamoros, Mexico. Tridonex is owned by a Philadelphia outfit called Cardone Industries—which in turn is owned by a Canadian hedge fund! Tridonex makes things like reconditioned used brakes. It sends most of its products to the U.S., and is a classic case of offshoring jobs to Mexico, as enabled by NAFTA.

But in 2019, the Democrats in Congress and Trump trade chief Robert Lighthizer rewrote NAFTA. The successor agreement, called USMCA, includes tough, enforceable labor rights provisions, guaranteeing workers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada the right to organize and join unions free from harassment. - The American Prospect

Who Biden picks as trade representative will say a lot

This article is a really good overview.

For several presidencies, including those of Obama and Clinton, the U.S. trade representative has been keeper of the orthodoxy. U.S. policies ignored the fate of domestic manufacturing. Instead, they pursued a brand of globalism by and for multinational corporations, especially financial ones.

Biden’s USTR nominee will signal whether he is serious about rebuilding U.S. industry and jobs. - The American Prospect

U.S. trade policy is frankly in turmoil

This is actually a pretty comprehensive look at where we're at.

The picture that emerges is complex. Even critics of the administration said that Lighthizer had a point when he argued that the gentler tactics of his predecessors had not been effective. And they acknowledge that the once-obscure USTR is more powerful than it’s ever been, its mission reoriented from easing corporate investment barriers overseas to erecting hurdles that might force those companies to keep jobs in America after decades of manufacturing decline.

Along the way, Lighthizer has bent the rules of the international trading system and thrown businesses into turmoil as they race to comply with changes to import costs. He’s ruptured international relationships, maintained tariffs on $350 billion worth of imports, and constructed a series of piecemeal and delicate agreements with trading partners that are as good as the next president’s dedication to enforcing them.

So far, the promised benefits of this upheaval are hard to see. The gap between American imports and exports of goods is as big as it’s ever been, while manufacturing output and job growth flatlined in 2019. To the extent that manufacturers have pulled out of China, they’ve shifted to countries like Vietnam and Mexico, rather than set up factories in the U.S. And Lighthizer has failed to achieve his most ambitious goals, as a tempestuous president’s abrupt twists and turns sabotaged the patient, insistent approach on which his trade representative had built his reputation. - ProPublica