In essence, just as anti-immigration fervor reveals the ugly side of Know Nothing populism, blind opposition to free trade does as well.

The difference is that trade protectionism protects American capital much more than American labor.

1. you're making a common mistake, btd - just because our trade deals suck, doesn't mean that we couldn't have better ones.... we don't have to resort to protectionism unless the trade negotiators refuse to budge on their crappy laws.

2. you're making a second common mistake in assuming that just because the words "free trade" are in the name or discription of a bill, that must mean the bill is a free trade bill. as stiglitz says, a free trade bill would be 3 pages long - not a couple thousand.

krugman, and the rest of you, BTD included, seem to have left out some rather compelling aspects of any "free trade" agreement: the costs of compliance with various federal, state and local environmental statutes, that companies in the US have to deal with, that other countries don't necessarily burden their businesses with.

i am surprised at dr. krugman for ignoring that, the rest of you i'm not. this might explain the difference, between our water, air and land, and that of many of our "third-world" trading partners. yeah, i know our's isn't perfect, but it's a hell of lot better than mexico's or china's. just ask the people living there.

this costs money, which impacts cost of goods sold, and ultimately the selling price of products and the bottom line. failure to take this into account, while negotiating trade agreements, leaves our manufacturing sector at an additional disadvantage, comparitively.

Anti-NAFTA rallying cries have been fun for some

this is just wrong.

i spent a week of vacation in miami volunteering with the national lawyers guild (as a legal observer) for the ftaa meeting protests in 2003 (and i posted comments here at talkleft about my experience then). it was not fun. i was pepper sprayed and tear gassed, saw kids beaten bloody and police indescriminately firing hundreds of rounds of rubber bullets at people who weren't doing anything wrong.

But if Democrats really want to help American workers, they'll have to do it with a pro-labor policy that relies on better tools than trade policy. Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy's winners, would be a good place to start.

Basically, he points out that Bush is anti-worker, and this puts the power to protect against labor abuses solely in his hands. A new Congress is coming in 15 mo., why the rush to pass this? It will have a negative impact on American workers, will make people like his constituents lose their jobs, will alienate the base opposed to it. A free trade deal that doesn't have such deleterious effects could be better worked out under a Dem prez and Congress. R's are going to use it against D's in districts like his.

Crazy.

Failing to lead ?

NOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah, the two Congressmen who represent most of the city of Philadelphia, split on final passage. I can't remember the last time they disagreed on a vote. The difference is that Brady's district is slightly more white and Catholic.

(Brady took about half of Bob Borski's former Reagan Democrat PA-03 (Northeast Philly) and Senate-aspirant Allyson Schwartz took the other half.)

I think it all has to do with GOTV machinery: Fattah relies on traditional black community orgs and Brady needs more union manpower.

Hillary Clinton has yet to take a position, though she has suggested the nation may need a little "timeout" from new trade agreements pending a review of the effects previous pacts have had on American workers.

A Peru free trade treaty will be bad for both Peruvians and Americans, except for capital and multi-nationals.

From the WTO on down, the trade agreements are designed to favor the developed world's corporations which have a built-in advantage.

New agreements between the European Union and the ACP(Africa, Carribean, Pacific)countries which are supposed to take effect in 2008 will do a lot to destroy those countries economies and deprive those governments of much of their funding: from twenty to eighty percent.