Some Elements of a Progressive International Trade Policy
There are other ways to organize U.S. international trade. The neoliberal free trade of recent decades and the trade restrictions of Trumpian tariffs are not the only options.
2 min read
Here's what I've got for this week:
(1) Jason Stanley, Detroit's Drought of Democracy. Last week's links included a piece about water privatization in Detroit; this piece is from the New York Times' philosophy blog, The Stone, by one of my oldest friends. Jason gets a huge audience in The Stone, and this time a blogger from the Detroit Metro Times took note (positively), and a columnist from the Detroit News took note (negatively). Here's a compilation of our recent coverage of Detroit:
- The Pension-Busters' Playbook, by frequent D&S author Katherine Sciacchitano.
- Detroit and Deindustrialization, an interview with Barry Bluestone (accompanied by photos from the incredible collection, The Ruins of Detroit, which I've plugged here several times).
- How a Progressive Tax System Made Detroit a Powerhouse, by Mason Gaffney and Polly Cleveland, about the Georgist land tax.
- Wiped Away in 8 Mile, by the great Greg Palast.
(2) Arthur MacEwan, The Minimum Wage and Inflation. The latest from our current issue, Arthur's "Ask Dr. Dollar" column. (3) Several links on fracking and finance: It's been a year since we had our cover story on fracking by Rob Larson, Frackonomics: The Science and Economics of the Gas Boom. Here are some related pieces I've stumbled on lately, mostly on fracking and finance:
- Wolf Richter, Where Money Goes to Die: How Fracking Blows Up Balance Sheets of Oil and Gas Companies. The point seems to be that fracking, with all its documented horrible effects, is, like so much else, driven by "the giant pool of money".
- Translantional Institute, No Fracking Way: How the EU-US Trade Agreement Risks Expanding Fracking. From back in March, about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
- The Sierra Club, Energy Trade in the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Endangerin Action on Climate Change. More on the TTIP and fracking, from May.
- Zach Carter and Kate Sheppard, Read The Secret Trade Memo Calling For More Fracking and Offshore Drilling. Same topic, also from May.
- Deborah Rogers, Shale and Wall Street: Was the Decline in Natural Gas Prices Orchestrated? A report that argues that the shale boom is a Wall Street-generated bubble.
(4) Gerald Friedman, What Happened to the Recovery? Pt. 1. Over at our sister blog, Triple Crisis, we have posted Pt. 1 of Jerry Friedman's two-part "Economy in Numbers" on the so-called recovery. We'll post Pt. 2 at Triple Crisis later this week, and I'll post the whole thing together on the D&S site.
--Chris Sturr