Keller @ Large: Trade Deal A Tough, Tough Call
BOSTON (CBS) - We don't talk here very often about foreign elections, but when our cousins over in Britain make a loud statement that upsets the conventional wisdom, we need to take note of it.
After years of an economic recovery program under David Cameron and the Conservatives that had shown some results but also included unpopular cuts in social programs, the Labor party had adopted a lot of the same rhetoric you hear from our own Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with a sharp focus on economic inequality and an indictment of Cameron as too eager to promote a form of trickle-down economics.
But according to the political reporter Dan Balz of the Washington Post, that argument "proved less effective with voters than Cameron's emphasis on rising overall growth...the Conservative victory here should be read by Democrats as evidence that their own economic messaging will need work heading into 2016, that it might not be as simple as claiming the deck is stacked, calling for an increase in the minimum wage and expecting voters to follow."
That's what makes the imminent Congressional debate over the proposed Asian-Pacific free-trade agreement a telling early moment in the 2016 campaign.
That trade deal is bitterly opposed by Warren and others who say it sells out U.S. workers just as NAFTA did back in the 1990's. It is supported by President Obama and industries where NAFTA helped send exports soaring.
It's a tough, tough call. Economic globalization creates big winners and big losers, but can it be stopped even if we want to?
Will the appeal of potential growth trump the desire for protectionism here as it did in Britain?
And if it does, are Warren and company helping create their worst nightmare – GOP control of both Congress and the White House?
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