Jagdish Bhagwati: Obama is better than Clinton on trade
Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, author of In Defense of Globalization and other fine works, sallies forth in today’s Financial Times to say that Barack Obama would be a better free trader than Hillary Clinton. He offers five main arguments: Clinton wants to pause the Doha round of trade talks; Obama never said so. Obama ...
Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, author of In Defense of Globalization and other fine works, sallies forth in today's Financial Times to say that Barack Obama would be a better free trader than Hillary Clinton. He offers five main arguments:
Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, author of In Defense of Globalization and other fine works, sallies forth in today’s Financial Times to say that Barack Obama would be a better free trader than Hillary Clinton. He offers five main arguments:
- Clinton wants to pause the Doha round of trade talks; Obama never said so.
- Obama has better economic advisors, such as Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago.
- The unions that support Obama are less opposed to trade than those that support Clinton.
- Clinton must oppose NAFTA more strongly than Obama because her husband supported it.
- Obama proposed the Patriot Employer Act, a politically smart but economically stupid idea that will never be enacted. Proposing it and letting it fail will allow Obama to "abandon the anti-trade rhetoric and embrace the multilateral free trade that has served the American and the world interest so well."
It seems like the sort of argument that Obama — who is under attack for Goolsbee’s alleged "wink and nod" to the Canadians over NAFTA — would want to see aired after today’s Ohio primary.
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