[Peace-discuss] Remember being anti-(corporate)globalization? Obama isn't

[C. G. Estabrook]

[And remember who Obama's "economic policy director" is: "37-year-old Jason 
Furman ... is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company 
a 'progressive success story.' On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for 
sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, 'I won't shop there.' For Furman, 
however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the 'efforts to get 
Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits' are creating 'collateral damage' that 
is 'way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly 
for me to sit by idly and sing "Kum-Ba-Ya" in the interests of progressive 
harmony.'" Melanie Klein tells the sad story of Obama's tergiversations: 
<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/klein>.  --CGE]


	Obama vows to help restore US faith in globalisation
	By Edward Luce in Chicago
	Published: June 27 2008 03:00

A Barack Obama administration would mark a "break" from the US trade policies of 
the last few years and push for deals that would help overcome America's growing 
scepticism towards globalisation, according to the presidential candidate's 
economic policy director.

Many observers have expressed concern about Mr Obama's fealty to existing trade 
deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he has promised to 
renegotiate to improve its labour and environmental protections.

Both Canada and Mexico, the US's Nafta partners, have signalled anxiety about Mr 
Obama's pledge to reopen the deal. But Jason Furman, a former Clinton 
administration official who joined the Obama campaign earlier this month, 
insisted that Mr Obama was "a free trader" who was "firmly committed to the 
multilateral trading system".

That did not mean he would dilute his promise to reopen Nafta. "Barack Obama 
believes that the benefits of Nafta were oversold to the public and that it has 
cost a significant number of jobs [the Obama campaign estimates 1m job losses] 
in lots of communities and sectors of the economy," said Mr Furman, in an 
interview at Mr Obama's 11th-floor headquarters in Chicago.

"Ultimately this has made Americans more sceptical about free trade. Improving 
Nafta requires a break from the trade policies of the last few years, but not a 
break from trading with the world . . . We are confident we could work together 
with Canada and Mexico to find a way to amend Nafta that is in the interests of 
all three countries."

Mr Furman was sceptical about prospects for reviving the Doha round of world 
trade talks. "It is impossible to talk about what Senator Obama's views are on 
an agreement that doesn't exist," he said. "He does not want to pull back from 
the world - he wants to pull back from the failed trade policies of President Bush."

Mr Furman, who would be in line for a senior role in an Obama White House, 
sketched out an administration that would recalibrate the US approach to 
globalisation, both by amending its trade stance and by boosting investment in 
the middle classes, which he described as the engine of US growth.

He was scathing both about the effects of George W. Bush's economic policies on 
the middle classes and about John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, 
whom he described as someone "who isn't straight-talking about the choices we 
confront".

Mr Furman pointed out that the median household was almost $1,000 (€642, £508) 
worse off in real terms today than in 2001.

"Someone smarter than me can figure out a bumper sticker that says this was the 
first expansion on record where typical families ended up worse off than when 
they started," he said. "There's nothing in George Bush's fiscal policies that 
an Obama administration would want to emulate."

Among Mr Obama's priorities would be restoring public investment levels in basic 
scientific research, middle class education and creating a system of universal 
health insurance.

But the centrepiece of an Obama administration would be to make globalisation 
work for a majority, he said. "Globalisation is clearly posing an increasing set 
of challenges. It is the source of America's strength economically, but much of 
those benefits have been captured by the most successful while others have been 
left behind as inequality has increased and insecurity remains high."


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ee7add5e-43e7-11dd-842e-0000779fd2ac.html