From National Journal:

Here’s a telling sign of how much President Obama’s fortunes have changed since 2008 — a leading Democratic Congressional recruit is now attacking aRepublican congressman for supporting the president.

Former Ohio Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson, who was attacked relentlessly for being too close with President Obama in last year’s losing campaign, kicked off his comeback bid today by accusing his Republican rival of the same sin.

Wilson, who represented a rural, blue-collar district along the Ohio River, is seeking a rematch against freshman Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio.  In his successful 2010 campaign, Johnson effectively characterized Wilson as a lackey of national Democrats, blasting him for casting a critical vote for Obama’s health care law and the stimulus.

So it’s striking that Wilson is now trying to use that same tactic against Johnson, criticizing the congressman for supporting free trade agreements backed by President Obama.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Scott Lincicome to discuss the recent passage of free trade agreements with Korea, Panama and Columbia, Mitt Romney’s potential trade war with China, and the impact of Big Labor on America’s trade policies.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

One cheer (at most) for our new free trade agreements
The FTAs’ Price Tag, ctd.
In Both Parties, a Schism on Trade
Romney: China must respect the free-trade system
What’s Driving Mitt Romney’s China-Bashing?
Mitt Romney’s Aggressive China Rhetoric Questioned By Conservatives
The Obama-Romney Tariff

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From the Associated Press:

Congress approved free trade agreements Wednesday with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a four-year drought in the forming of new trade partnerships and giving the White House and Capitol Hill the opportunity to show they can work together to stimulate the economy and put people back to work.

In rapid succession, the House and Senate voted on the three trade pacts, which the administration says could boost exports by $13 billion and support tens of thousands of American jobs. None of the votes were close, despite opposition from labor groups and other critics of free trade agreements who say they result in job losses and ignore labor rights problems in the partner countries.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the opening of the fourth quarter, the movement of free-trade agreements in Congress and how a change of leadership could influence our relationship with China.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Disputed Trade Pacts Advance
Senate Republicans step up pressure on White House to submit free-trade deals
Why I’m liking Perry better than Romney
US free-trade group opposes China currency bill
China picks up U.S. slack in trade

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When asked to pick my most frustrating issue, I could list things from my policy field such as class warfare or income redistribution.

But based on all the speeches and media interviews I do, which  periodically venture into other areas, I suspect protectionism vs. free trade is the biggest challenge.

So I want to ask the protectionists (though anybody is free to provide feedback) how they would answer these simple questions.

1. Do you think politicians and bureaucrats should be able to tell you what you’re allowed to buy?

As Walter Williams has explained, this is a simple matter of freedom and liberty. If you want to give the political elite the authority to tell you whether you can buy foreign-produced goods, you have opened the door to endless mischief.

2. If trade barriers between nations are good, then shouldn’t we have trade barriers between states? Or cities?

This is a very straightforward challenge. If protectionism is good, then it shouldn’t be limited to national borders.

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Swedish economist Johan Norberg is the host of the new documentary Free or Equal, which retraces and updates the 1980 classic Free to Choose, featuring Milton and Rose Friedman. Like the Friedmans, Norberg travels the globe to look at the conditions under which prosperity and freedom flourish – and under what conditions they wither and die. Made by the same producer who created Free to Choose, Free or Equal will be appearing on PBS in 2011. For more information, a clip of the new documentary and the entire Free to Choose series, go here.

Norberg is the author of numerous books, including In Defense of Global Capitalism (2002) and Fiscal Fiasco (2009), a look at how the U.S. government’s policies contributed to and have exacerbated the length and intensity of the Great Recession.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Norberg to discuss how the changes in the world since the Friedmans’ earlier documentary effect their basic argument that individual economic freedom is a building block for a prosperous and open society. Overall, says Norberg, the Friedmans’ basic insights hold true and some of the places they celebrated – such as Hong Kong, then under British protection and now part of the People’s Republic of China – are still flourishing. But in countries and regions that continue to constrain economic and political liberties, reports Norberg, fear and privation still dominate.

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Donald Trump’s was accused of being a hypocrite during one of his recent interviews with CNN after admitting he bought a lot of merchandise from China. Why wouldn’t an American billionaire  buy from the US? There is so much more that could be written on this subject. And Trump didn’t nearly do a good enough job explaining it. So let me give it a shot.

China is currently utilizing several strategies in order to undermine America’s global economic hegemony. To cover even a few of them would fall outside of what’s really at stake between China and the U.S. What has long concerned Washington is China’s overt actions of purposefully decreasing the value of it currency which directly and negatively impacts the U.S., especially during times of high unemployment and while China continues to reach new levels of growth.

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In the midst of a massive fiscal crisis, a take-no-prisoners budget battle, a historically long recession, and two (make that three) wars, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) knows what really matters.

He’s pushing the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to only sell bobble-heads, T-shirts, snow-globes, and other souvenirs that are made in America. After getting a letter from and taking a meeting with the self-described Green Mountain State socialist, the folks at the Smithsonian have agreed to increase the amount of domestically produced junk for sale in their gift shops. They’re even constructing a new gift shop solely to products manufactured in America that will be called the Price of Freedom.

During a recent trip to the National Mall, Reason.tv found that such nativist grandstanding plays well with the man in the street, but CATO policy analyst Sallie James says protectionism doesn’t come cheap. In fact, top-down attempts to keep Americans in low-level manufacturing jobs is a great way to ruin the economy, whether we’re talking about Founding Father thimbles or higher-end electronics.

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Is there a new Cold War developing between China and the United States? That’s a question hovering over President Hu Jintao and his entourage as they come to Washington to discuss military, trade, and financial flash points with the Obama administration.

President Hu told the Wall Street Journal that “we should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality.” But is he to be believed?

Everyone agrees that this is a new, muscular, and more aggressive China. The more the Chinese strengthen economically, the more rambunctious they become with their foreign policy. Americans are increasingly irritated by this arrogance.

Just last week — and just as the Pentagon plans to cut back on the modernized F-22 stealth fighter — China insulted Defense Secretary Robert Gates by test-flying its own J-20 stealth bomber during his visit. Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wondered out loud why China is boosting its high-tech weaponry. He said, “Many of these capabilities seem to be focused very specifically on the United States.”

Surely the J-20 flight was a snub to Washington. Surely China’s whole military buildup is aimed directly at us. And surely China is of no particular help when it comes to the nuclear operations of North Korea and Iran.

Then, of course, are the numerous trade violations being committed by China.

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In the 1990s, it seemed as if individual rights, deregulation, free trade, and sound currency were taking hold in Latin America, a region finally on the rise after decades of coups, repression, and violence.

But in the 21st century, left-wing strongmen have made a comeback: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. Other countries in the region are headed in the wrong direction. Authoritarianism has been on the rise in Argentina ever since the economy collapsed (yet again) in 2002. Mexico’s violent drug war is escalating. In Cuba, the transfer of power from one Castro brother to the other hasn’t helped the economy or stopped human rights abuses.

What went wrong?

Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Mary Anastasia O’Grady, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board and a Journal columnist specializing in Latin America, to talk about the outlook for the region – and how free trade and drug legalization would go a long way to solving Latin America’s problems.

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Should farmers get thrown in jail for 90 days and hit with $1,000 in fines for engaging in free trade?

Unfortunately, that’s the law in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

And that is why the farmers are fighting back.  Tuesday they rallied [check out the pictures here], coming from around the state to secure their constitutional rights.  Yesterday, the Institute for Justice—the libertarian law firm that defends economic liberty nationwide—took the farmers’ case to federal court.

On December 1, 2009, the city council in Lake Elmo—a rural city just outside St. Paul—decided that it would begin enforcing a law that makes it illegal for farmers to sell products from their own land unless they were grown within Lake Elmo.

The city’s politicians argue that they are protecting Lake Elmo’s rural character.  In fact, they are destroying that character by making it impossible for their farmers to earn an honest living and increasing the likelihood that family farms will fail.

Consider Richard Bergmann.

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The Atlas Economic Research Foundation – a libertarian leaning organization – recently released a video featuring Foundation Vice-President Tom G. Palmer. Titled “Free Trade: The Great Prosperity Machine,” the video aims to make a compelling case for why free trade is good for everyone, not just foreign competitors, and makes reference to the classic libertarian economist Frederic Bastiat. Interested viewers can look here:

However, there are some problems with the video. For one thing, I’m not sure precisely who Palmer thinks his audience is, or who he wants it to be. Is he trying to persuade people on the Left? If so, then I don’t know how effective it is to talk about the benefits of exchange, since most Leftists view the exchanges that go on in trade relationships as fundamentally exploitative.

Moreover, Palmer’s argument that trade generates peace, while it could persuade some people to switch their position, probably won’t make a dent in the hardcore isolationist Left, which views trade as just another element of the military industrial complex and of the globalized order that underlies it. Maybe Palmer intends his video to speak to the more moderate technocratic Left, insofar as he uses scientific metaphors, but this seems like preaching to the choir. The moderate technocratic Left, as personified by Bill Clinton, has often been an ally of the internationally-oriented Right and the libertarian movement when it comes to trade, and I have yet to see any indicators that this attitude is changing.

What about the protectionist Right? Here things aren’t particularly encouraging either.

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Martin Wolf, columnist for the great Financial Times, has a must-read column this weekend:

The only truly global power was in rapid relative decline. Not long before, it had won a pyrrhic victory in a costly colonial war. New great powers were on the rise. An arms race was under way, as was competition for markets and resources in undeveloped areas of the world. Yet people still believed in the durability of the free trade and free capital flows that had nurtured prosperity and, many believed, had also underpinned peace.

That was how the world looked to many at the end of the “noughties” of the 20th century. Yet catastrophe lay ahead: a world war; a communist revolution; a Great Depression; fascism; and then another world war. The world order – built on competing great powers, imperialism and liberal markets – proved incapable of providing the public goods of peace and prosperity. It took calamity, the cold war and the replacement of the UK by the US as hegemonic power to re-establish stability. That then facilitated decolonisation, unprecedented economic expansion, the collapse of communism and yet another epoch of market-led global integration.

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Think big. Gigantic. This is the latest from Charles Shumer, the Democrat from New York:

When he found out that Adidas was planning to outsource manufacturing of NBA jerseys he “called on the league to terminate its contract with the German-based sportswear giant unless it halts plans to transfer production of game-day jerseys from an upstate New York facility to Thailand.”

Great idea! Let’s make sure that we force companies to produce stuff at the highest possible cost in the name of some lame “buy and make American” nonsensical theory. I am sure that forcing Adidas to give up on the possibility to reduce its production costs will do wonders for this economy.

Besides, as George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux noted in a still unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Daily News yesterday:

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President Obama appeared at Federal Hall in New York yesterday to reiterate his support for a massive overhaul of financial services regulation. At the center of the speech the president laid out his economic philosophy:

I have always been a strong believer in the power of the free market. I believe that jobs are best created not by government, but by businesses and entrepreneurs willing to take a risk on a good idea. I believe that the role of the government is not to disparage wealth, but to expand its reach; not to stifle markets, but to provide the ground rules and level playing field that helps to make those markets more vibrant — and that will allow us to better tap the creative and innovative potential of our people. For we know that it is the dynamism of our people that has been the source of America’s progress and prosperity.

If this were the philosophy actually driving regulatory reform, it would be the biggest ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy field of government-expanding reforms (health care, energy, and college loans to name a few). Unfortunately, the plan the White House sent over to Congress in June does not line up with this statement from the president.

Instead, the bills now floating around the Rayburn House Office Building and Rep. Barney Frank’s Financial Services Committee propose reforms that will stifle innovation and restrict opportunities to create wealth. The White House plan, as proposed, would not create an even playing field for competition, but would give big firms a competitive advantage by labeling them too big to fail. Ultimately, the regulation reform proposals represent a massive power grab from Washington.

The president criticized the doctrine of too big to fail (TBTF) yesterday, but his plan will create a tiered structure naming the biggest firms systemic risks to the system because of their size and interconnectedness. The proposed resolution authority would essentially act as a built-in bailout mechanism for those firms. So instead of ending TBTF, the president’s plan actually codifies the policy, essentially turning Wall Street’s biggest institutions into government-sponsored entities in the mold of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the crisis.

Firms knowing they are TBTF with government protection will have a greater incentive to take risks. Lenders, knowing the TBTF firms have the backing of the government, will offer the cheapest of credit to JP Morgan Mae and Citi Mac, creating an uneven market. That’s not the level playing field the president wants.

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