Buchanan, sole voice against free trade?

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Tue Mar 2 12:08:59 PST 1999


-----Original Message----- From: Max Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>


>But it should be recognized that the media consistently elevate Buchanan
>(who is announcing for prez today) as the sole political critic of free
trade
>and neglect everyone on the liberal side except Ralph Nader, who isn't a
politician.
>So equations of anti-free trade and the right should be resisted. Buchanan
got
>on this bandwagon late in the game, as he did for all of his other 'worker'
stances.

Also, it pisses me off that leftists even pretend that there is any similarity in political positions between Buchanan's position and any ethical left position on trade. He is anti-free trade in the same way he is pro-white male in every other position he has-- he wants to reserve as many jobs as possible for whites and will fight blacks, women, immigrants and third world workers to preserve white male labor privileges.

To the extent that the anti-free trade position shares that white male protectionist position, I am actually on the free trade side. A hell of a lot of progressive activists in third world country oppose even negotiated labor standards precisely because they suspect they will largely be used not for equity purposes, but merely as a tool by the US government to hurt workers historically excluded from employment globally.

I would rather have Clinton's policy on trade than Buchanan's, but as Max notes, there are plenty of voices like Gephardt, Bonior, Jesse Jackson, Nader and others who have an ethical left view of trade. So we don't have to make that choice.

But don't even pretend that we have anything in common with Buchanan other than a momentary convergence on a particular policy. The left and the right share policies around political free speech as well, but that doesn't mean we have to claim kinship with the TURNER DIARIES.

--Nathan Newman



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