FORGET left and right. These days, it is often said, the real dividing line in politics is between open-door liberals and pull-up-the-drawbridge nationalists. Like most grand claims, this one can be overdone. But the pummelling that international trade is taking on both sides of the Atlantic suggests there is something to it.
Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen—leaders of right-wing populist parties in, respectively, Britain and France—sound like the far left when they dismiss deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed agreement between the European Union and America, as stitch-ups that favour only big corporations. In America, Donald Trump’s pronouncements (“It’s not free trade, it’s stupid trade”) resemble those of Bernie Sanders, the “democratic socialist” who is slowing Hillary Clinton’s path to the Democratic presidential nomination.
Why has trade become the piñata of politics? Partly because it fits the anti-elite mood. Trade deals are cooked up behind closed doors by obscure bureaucrats. Negotiating positions are hidden from voters. The economic changes...Continue reading
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