Good Obama foreign policy, bad Obama foreign policy

WORLD VIEW: "Why Washington Worries," by Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, 23 March 2009.

NATIONAL WEEKLY EDITION: "A Tougher Stance: The U.S. is dissatisfied with global markets," by Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, 16-22 March 2009.

Zakaria is right that Obama has done a masterful job of rejiggering a host of relations with the outside world. I too consider these changes necessary and good.

But this emphasis on domestic and social issues WRT trade, right when global trade is experiencing its deepest drop in eight decades, is beyond self-destructive. Ron Kirk, nominee for U.S. Trade Rep, is the new poster boy for this approach. He's blaming foreign competition for our current woes.

If Obama goes far enough down this path, it will not matter one whit how smart he is in other spheres. He will become a Hoover far more than Bush ever was. Nothing else he seeks to improve will survive the process, especially since so much of the world holds us responsible for the financial crisis.

But Kirk is indicating that the administration, while not renegotiating NAFTA openly (don't forget the bad decision on Mexican truckers), won't be following through on Bush-started Free Trade Agreements. Instead, those will be subject to new criteria of "social responsibility."

This alone is enough to make me rethink my vote for Obama. McCain would have done far less damage to our future simply by trying to do less to "fix" trade.

Comments

[Arsalan]

I'm not a fan of Obama's economic views which tend to err towards protectionism. However, I can't help think that maybe what the U.S did with Mexico was a good idea. It was less than a year ago I remember my crazy frat roommate and his cohorts going crazy over the white powder from down south. Not to mention a few pot-head friends going down to Baja California getting some sticky southern buds in Tijuana with the horrible stench of urine and malaise. As much as I would like to view Mexico as being legitimate in any way (besides its vast oil exports) I really can't. By the way, I think the Merida Initiative should be stopped.

[Thunderhart]

This is why I was a McCain Democrat, because simply put Obama was the most completely in the tank for the unions during the Democratic primaries and, unfortunately, he is now showing that once bought, he stays bought.

More than anything else, this idiotic stance on free trade, picking fights with first China (Geithner's idiotic comments) and now Mexico is what threatens to turn a bad recession into a global depression.

If the Democrats -- my party! -- don't reverse course and remember that rank stupidity like 1930s protectionism is all too repeatable, they will deserve the political oblivion that will inevitably come from such a disastrous mismanagement of the U.S. and the world economy.

Even more sadly, we could see the first American President of African heritage prove to be a disaster for Africa just when growing free trade and FDI was offering the glimmerings of hope for that long-suffering continent.