“We do big things.”
This was inspiring rhetoric from President Barack Obama in last night’s State of the Union address.
Many of the president’s broad themes — especially the need to promote innovation, step up public investment, and preserve a vital, affirmative role for government — are important expressions of how the nation can do big things.
But there were many sources of concern in the speech as well.
The nation’s great policy crisis – and the Obama administration’s political crisis – is the Great Recession and the fact that one in six Americans who would like a full-time job cannot get one.
Why in the world is President Barack Obama selecting as his chief of staff a person who comes from the very Wall Street that wrecked the economy and who is an ardent supporter of the job-offshoring, NAFTA-style trade agreements that have hollowed out the industrial heartland?
This is exactly the wrong direction for the administration, which seems intent on drawing exactly the wrong lessons from the 2010 elections. What the public wants is meaningful action on jobs and an end to the insider, corporate deal-making arrangements that William Daley represents.
Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen.
Are you a reporter writing about a local factory closing? Are you writing about trade as an election issue, jobs, the economy or the trade deficit but don’t know where to get good information or how to localize it? Look no further.
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch today launched its Trade Data Center, a new and exciting tool for researching and illustrating the impacts of trade policy on local communities. It’s free and contains previously unavailable information packaged in an easy-to-understand, customizable and user-friendly format.
“Whether you are a seasoned trade hand or just beginning to look into globalization, or whether you are for or against fair trade, the Trade Data Center will have something for you,” said Travis McArthur, trade and finance researcher for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and lead Trade Data Center creator. “We hope that this will serve as a resource for journalists, policymakers, researchers, students – anyone with an interest in the impact of trade policy. It really is your one-stop-shop, and we’ll be updating it frequently with new features.”
The Trade Data Center is available at http://www.citizen.org/TradeDataCenter.
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, talks about the trade talks that are beginning today in Australia. For a detailed look at what is at stake, visit www.EyesOnTrade.org, Public Citizen’s globalization blog.
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Ten years after protesters shut down the WTO ministerial in Seattle and halted WTO expansion, Obama faces a choice. Will he help modernize the global economy? Or will he continue the agenda of the past, which has fostered devastating economic, food and climate crises? Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, explores the issue in a recent piece in the Nation magazine.
She also paired up with an unlikely ally – a longtime promoter of trade agreements – to pen a Washington Post op-ed explaining how a treaty on global warming could require new trade rules and that allowing the WTO to handle trade disputes over climate matters is a recipe for discord.
