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Farmers are in Trouble—Restructuring the USMCA Could Turn Things Around
New labeling requirements to ensure the integrity of domestic markets, as well as price guarantees tied to anti-dumping measures, could improve the economic prospects of producers amid our ongoing trade war.
Sep 16, 2025
Farmers may be the proverbial “canaries in the coal mine” when it comes to the effects of US President Donald Trump’s grand tariff experiment.
Point in fact—corn and soy prices are experiencing precipitous falls in no small part due to tariffs that China has placed on US imports. Cotton prices are dropping for the same reason, as nearly 80% of this crop is destined for export and China slapped a 15% retaliatory tariff on it. Prices for pork and beef appear on a different trajectory, with the latter benefiting from domestic shortages. But even here, trouble is on the horizon as China has cut back on imports from the US. This, as Brazil is exporting more soy, beef, and cotton to China to replace what US farmers once sent. It is no coincidence that the percentage of farm income in 2025 coming from government payments—25%—is approaching the level it was at when the Covid-19 pandemic devastated markets in 2020. The $59 billion dedicated for farmers’ relief payments in the "One Big Beautiful Bill" is testament to the fact that the economic future of rural America appears bleak.
The economic challenges our farmers face places even more pressure on the upcoming United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) renegotiations. Even though set for next year, Mexico, Canada, and the US are already staking positions and signaling their intentions. Look no further than Mexico contemplating placing tariffs on Chinese imports, a move clearly meant to stay in the good, however fickle, graces of the Trump administration.
Looking out for US farmers, there are some concrete policies that a renegotiated USMCA could feature. Specifically, new labeling requirements to ensure the integrity of domestic markets, as well as price guarantees tied to anti-dumping measures, could improve the economic prospects of producers as they struggle to weather the uncertainty of our ongoing trade war.
The problem is that in the past, the Trump administration took the wrong approach for how to improve the situation of producers when dealing with our neighbors. Concretely, when Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) last time he was in office, besides rebranding it the USMCA, he also sought to open Canadian markets for US dairy exports.
Eking out marginal increases, those gains ultimately made no real improvement in the prices that farmers received. Proof of this is how dairy farmers have consistently struggled to stay in business, as we have witnessed a 25% nationwide decline from 2017 to 2023 in the number of licensed dairy herds. The recent uptick in dairy prices has nothing to do with USMCA, but instead to a reduction in feed costs and farmers cutting down their herds by selling heifers for beef.
Farmers are known for their resiliency. At the same time, they can only take so much.
Failing to finagle improved prices for farmers from changing exports, this time USMCA negotiations should focus on ensuring the integrity of markets.
The first step toward this would be for the US to reinstate Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (MCOOL). Originally part of the 2002 Farm Bill before being removed after Canada and Mexico put pressure on the World Trade Organization (WTO), this program would make retailers disclose the origins of their products, including milk, dairy, meat, fish, and fruits, and vegetables. As such, MCOOL allows consumers to make informed purchasing decisions and choose our products instead of picking the cheapest goods of dubious quality that may come from abroad.
Such a change would assist ranchers particularly, as since Trump has taken office, Brazilian beef imports flooded US markets. And since the WTO has been paralyzed since Trump’s first term when he chose not to appoint judges to the institution’s appellate court, now MCOOL can return without opposition.
Next, pricing policies could be put in place to assure a decent income for farmers and prevent dumping.
The US has already made one move in this direction, placing a 17% tariff on tomato imports and accusing Mexican growers of dumping, that is, exporting goods into another market at below cost to drive competitors out of business.
Preventing dumping also cuts both ways, as when NAFTA was first introduced, US corn imports drove Mexican farmers out of business, into poverty, and then to cross the border. Accordingly, if Mexico wants to restrict the flow of some commodity south, such as corn, they should be allowed to.
To avoid a tit-for-tat battle, resolving this issue requires setting floor prices in some capacity. Like what they have already done with wages for automobile workers, negotiators could do the same for grains, as well as for livestock. They could also set limits on what comes from outside the trade bloc, like Mexico appears ready to do with China. The same could be done with Brazil and its beef, or perhaps with the many European countries that send billions of dollars of cheese a year into the US. Cheese is a critical element of dairy pricing, and decreasing imports could lead to more US production and better prices for farmers.
Farmers are known for their resiliency. At the same time, they can only take so much. Export-driven growth may sound like a good idea, but the reality has been different. A renegotiated USMCA that actually puts farmers first could turn things around and give producers a fighting chance to make a decent income and stay on the land.
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Why Aren't You Supporting the Trump Tariffs?
Progressives and Democrats need a trade policy that makes sense, resonates with working people, and proves they understand the economy better than a know-nothing President Trump.
Apr 07, 2025
On this question, you can take your pick:
- They will lead to a destructive trade war.
- They will lead to a massive economic depression, like the 1930s.
- They will make prices and unemployment rise at the same time, like in the 1970s.
- They will disappear our savings and pensions as the stock market craters, like in 1929.
- And to save democracy, WE SHOULD NEVER SUPPORT TRUMP ON ANYTHING!
The United Autoworkers (UAW), one of the most progressive unions in the country, isn’t buying any of this. For now, it fully supports the Trump tariffs. As the UAW puts it:
This is a long-overdue shift away from a harmful economic framework that has devastated the working class and driven a race to the bottom across borders in the auto industry. It signals a return to policies that prioritize the workers who build this country—rather than the greed of ruthless corporations.
For more than thirty years, the UAW and other unions and progressives have fought free trade deals like NAFTA, adopted in 1994, which in the succeeding decades have decimated American working-class jobs and communities, especially in the industrial areas of the Midwest.
The argument against free trade was simple: Allowing corporations to flee easily and rapidly to low-wage countries put them in a competitive race to the bottom in pursuit of cheaper wages and less costly working conditions. This was especially true in the better-paid U.S. manufacturing industries. Company negotiators threatened job relocation or reductions in virtually every collective bargaining effort with industrial unions.
Corporations said it again and again: “Accept wage and benefit concessions or we’ll move the plant to Mexico.” For labor unions that was a lose-lose proposition. Take less money and benefits and undercut your standard of living or hold fast and lose your job.
The Democrats, led by President Bill Clinton, put together enough votes to pass the deal, and they have been paying the price ever since. Sherrod Brown, the former U.S. Senator from Ohio, says that what he repeatedly heard in his failed senatorial campaign last year was how the Democrats destroyed jobs via NAFTA.
Allowing corporations to easily relocate abroad has been a key element of the neoliberal march to rising inequality. Free trade involves a trade-off, it was argued. More workers would get jobs in growing export industries than would be lost in manufacturing. And the rise of cheap imports would lower the prices of goods workers bought, effectively giving them a pay raise.
Of course, the reality was that the new non-union working-class jobs pay far less than the unionized ones that were lost, and the working-class knows it. And while cheaper goods from Walmart likely offset some of the material sting, moving down the socio-economic ladder is painful and contrary to the American dream.
After years of railing against this Faustian bargain, progressives are now watching Trump claim he is protecting U.S. industries through massive tariffs. The goal, he sometimes says, is to bring back the jobs that were lost.
Progressive Democrats are stuck with a painful dilemma. If they oppose the tariffs across the board, they will be siding with the financiers and CEOs who have profited wildly from low or no tariffs, and have ushered in runaway inequality and increasing job insecurity. (See Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
But Democrats on the left so detest Trump, that it’s nearly impossible for them to join with the UAW to support the tariffs. Unless a new path is forged, progressives will find themselves in an unholy alliance with the Wall Street neoliberals and against the working-class, sounding the death knell for any kind of progressive-worker alliance to build an alternative to Trumpism.
What is a Progressive Trade Policy?
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is attacking the Trump tariffs by playing his Vermont card, since the state has extensive economic ties to Canada. His key is focusing on working-class jobs:
Given Vermont’s long-established economic ties with our Canadian neighbor, the impact on our state will be even greater. We need a rational and well-thought-out trade policy, not arbitrary actions from the White House. I will do everything possible to undo the damage that Trump’s tariffs are causing working families in Vermont and across the country.
But just what would a “well-thought-out trade policy” look like?
Boarder Adjustment Tax
The goal of a worker-oriented trade policy is to take wages out of competition. That could be most easily done through a tariff called a border adjustment tax. The tax covers the difference in wages between the low-wage and high-wage workers, something that is easily calculated. If wages are nearly identical there would be no need for a tariff.
Targeted Tariffs
When John Deere and Company announced last year it was moving approximately 1,000 jobs to Mexico, in effect to finance higher CEO pay and stock buybacks for Wall Street investors, Trump threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on any subsequently imported Deere products from that country. That sent the exact message workers wanted to hear: You move our jobs away to fatten your pockets, you get hammered.
Hard to argue with that proposition, but the Democrats did just that. Instead of dealing with how the job shift to Mexico was being used to finance stock giveaways to Wall Street, they rolled out Mark Cuban, who called the tariffs “insane,” because they would hurt Deere.
What About Countries with High-wage Labor?
Workers in export industries in northern Europe, Canada, and Japan have wages and benefits as high or higher than U.S. workers. What’s the rationale, for example, to put tariffs on German-made cars? One reason would be to equalize tariffs in each country and in the long run move them towards zero. The other is to encourage them to increase production in the US.
Ironically, about 5,600 German corporations already have been moving to the U.S. as they seek access to bigger markets and lower production costs. As many set up in low-wage states in the U.S. South, they avoid the higher labor costs in Germany. Also, they have been taking advantage of lavish subsidies as states compete to attract jobs. Energy is also cheaper in the U.S. and transportation costs are lowered. And finally, Germany makes certain high-quality products, especially in green energy, that aren’t yet produced here.
This suggests that a “well thought-out trade policy,” a la Sanders, with Germany should be the result of negotiations, not unilateral actions.
But Trump doesn’t do “well-thought-out,” which means his tariffs are a colossal mess, perhaps even the product of quickly produced ChatGPT hallucinations.
Yet opposing Trump across the board isn’t a well-thought-out approach either. It leads to the tone-deaf reactions of people like Mark Cuban that protect the status quo and avoid dealing with actual job loss caused by plant relocations to low-wage countries and the impact of such threats on collective bargaining. Which, needless to say, is the real problem.
The UAW is trying to make the distinction between supporting pro-worker tariffs and opposing other anti-worker Trump actions. As UAW president Shawn Fain recently said:
But ending the race to the bottom also means securing union rights for autoworkers everywhere with a strong National Labor Relations Board, a decent retirement with Social Security benefits protected, healthcare for all workers including through Medicare and Medicaid, and dignity on and off the job. The UAW and the working class in general couldn’t care less about party politics; working people expect leaders to work together to deliver results. The UAW has been clear: we will work with any politician, regardless of party, who is willing to reverse decades of working-class people going backwards in the most profitable times in our nation’s history.
For progressive Democrats UAW’s approach will be hard swallow. First, it dilutes the all-out attack on Trump for every action he takes, each of which is viewed as an existential threat to democracy. And secondly, it forces the Democrats to deal with job destruction in the private sector, something they have failed to do for more than a generation.
A better approach would be for left politicians like Sanders to sit down with the UAW to hammer out a common progressive position. Where tariffs protect jobs and remove job relocation from negotiations, they should be supported. Where they kill jobs or simply attack high-wage countries for spite, they should be opposed and replaced by careful negotiations to create a low-tariff level playing field.
Let popular worker support for tariffs teach us that this issue requires problem solving, and support for any tariff should not signal failure on a leftist litmus test. The alternative, pure opposition to tariffs, which is where the entire Democratic Party and the left seems to be headed, is only likely to increase working-class support for MAGA.
Jesus, how did we get into this mess?
Maybe ask the Democrats who didn’t have the guts to challenge Biden’s decision to run again until it was far too late.
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Is Trump Falling Into the Trump Tariff Trap?
The Democrats are once again abdicating the jobs terrain to Trump, hoping instead that his tariff toy will blow up in his dictatorial hands. Instead of calling tariffs “insane,” Democrats should call them job-killing tariffs. And as prices rise, they can blame Trump for that as well.
Mar 13, 2025
Whether by design or instinct, candidate Donald Trump set a perfect trap for the Democrats when, in September 2024, he reacted to the John Deere and Company’s announcement that it would move a thousand jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump said then:
I am just notifying John Deere right now that if you do that, we are putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States.
Trump saw Deere’s announcement as the perfect opportunity to jump on Deere’s job destruction, which the company used to finance 12.2 billion in stock buybacks to enrich its investors.
The Democrats? They sent billionaire Mark Cuban out to the media to complain that the tariffs were “insane.”
But threatening tariffs did not feel insane to the Deere workers who were about to lose their jobs. Nor did they feel insane to the millions of other workers who had lost their jobs due to “free trade” deals like NAFTA.
The Democrats now have a chance to turn the tables—but, alas, they probably won’t.
The Democrats stumbled into the Trump’s tariff trap and provided many workers with yet another reason to abandon a party that had failed to say anything at all about the needless job destruction caused by overt corporate greed.
After Trump won the presidency last November, I was sure he would set more tariff traps, provoking the Democrats to reflexively react as corporate shills.
But along the way something funny happened. Trump fell into his own tariff trap, and his public support has fallen somewhat. The Democrats now have a chance to turn the tables—but, alas, they probably won’t.
Why Does Trump Love Tariffs?
Even the most ardent MAGA apologist knows that Trump has dictatorial impulses. He wants to play Brando in “The Godfather” and make you an offer you can’t refuse.
But playing Don Corleone in domestic affairs doesn’t come easily. Trump can flood the zone with executive orders, but the courts are still functioning and often enforce the law. Even a pliable Congress has rules which can get in the way of the legislative results Trump is demanding.
But there are two areas where Trump really can act unilaterally—foreign affairs and tariff policy.
As president, Trump is free to bully Ukraine, kiss up to Putin, threaten to annex Greenland, Panama, and even Canada. No one in the U.S. can really stop him. He doesn’t need the blessing of Congress unless he wants a new treaty, which he doesn’t.
Similarly, he can use Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes the U.S. Trade Representative, a Trump toady, to impose tariffs in response to unfair trade practices, which are not defined.
There is no way a full-scale trade war with Canada will do anything but shatter jobs on both sides of the border, while raising prices as well.
Tariffs are a shiny new toy for Trump to play with. He can turn tariffs on and off, making entire countries jump to his tune. Each day he comes up with new reasons to justify them—fentanyl, immigrants, unfair subsidies, too much control of domestic banking (God forbid!). But these are just excuses for having fun by intimidating entire countries.
Trump can also combine his control of foreign policy with tariffs, as he is gleefully doing with Canada. What fun it is to threaten to take down the Canadian economy with tariffs while bullying them into becoming the 51st state. Clearly Trump wants to flex his dictatorial muscles, even as his real one’s sag with age.
But by playing dictator, he has abdicated the targeted use of tariffs to protect jobs. There is no way a full-scale trade war with Canada will do anything but shatter jobs on both sides of the border, while raising prices as well. Why? Because corporations like John Deere are not fleeing to Canada to find cheaper labor.
As a result, a tariff war with Canada is likely to kiss goodbye as many U.S. jobs as are protected. But Trump doesn’t seem to care because he’s all in on making Canada sweat. Damn the jobs! Damn inflation! He’s simply in love with his unilateral powers, which no one else in the world has. That’s a high that beats fentanyl.
The Trump Trap of Stagflation
Trump may not know it, but he is playing with fire. Tariffs are certain to raise U.S. prices. Why? Because when U.S. corporations see that their competition from Canada faces price increases caused by the 25 percent tariff, the companies will raise their own prices, especially in key industries with only a handful of large competitors.
A tariff war with Canada is likely to kiss goodbye as many U.S. jobs as are protected. But Trump doesn’t seem to care because he’s all in on making Canada sweat. Damn the jobs! Damn inflation! He’s simply in love with his unilateral powers...
Furthermore, by Trump turning his tariff toy on and off, he is causing economic uncertainty. That uncertainty has already had a drastic impact on the stock market.
But it will get much worse if corporations hold back on investment decisions until Trump stops fiddling with his toy.
It’s a very big deal when corporations delay investment decisions. Slower investment rollouts can lead to an economic slowdown and even a recession. And such a downturn can quickly get out of hand, because the Wall Steet derivative games, the kind of which that caused the 2008 crash, are up and running again, bigger than ever.
So, here’s the trap. Tariffs will cause inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to combat price increases. And higher interest rates will further reduce economic activity, leading to more unemployment. The Fed then will be unable to boost employment, because that requires decreasing interest rates, which are likely to further fuel inflation.
Bingo, stagflation. I wonder how Trump will feel if morphs into Jimmy Carter?
What Should the Democrats Do?
James Carville is telling the Democrats to do nothing. Play dead and let the guy implode.
But that’s a very dangerous game. Even with all the chaos Trump still has favorability ratings close to 50 percent. His supporters see him taking action, it’s why they voted for him, and they will give him time to make his plans work. Yes, there are protests, but they’re nothing like in Trump’s first term. The danger is, if the Democrats give him uncontested time and space, Trump might find a way to escape from his trap.
Instead, the Democrats should take a page from Trump and put job protection on the top of their agenda. As tariffs bite and cause job destruction, the Democrats should show up and support those laid-off workers. Instead of calling tariffs “insane,” they should call them job-killing tariffs. And as prices rise, they can blame Trump for that as well.
I wonder how Trump will feel if morphs into Jimmy Carter?
More importantly, they should go after any company that receives taxpayer money and is laying off taxpayers. They should slam stock buybacks that enrich Wall Street wealth extractors and CEOs. They should make it perfectly clear that protecting jobs from corporate greed is the number one priority of the Democratic Party.
Will they do this? Dream on.
There is little indication that the Democrats are willing to upset their Wall Street backers by interfering with private sector layoff decisions and stock buybacks. The Democrats are once again abdicating the jobs terrain to Trump, hoping instead that his tariff toy will blow up in his dictatorial hands.
Maybe it will, or maybe working people will see that the Democrats still don’t give a damn about their job security. At least Trump is trying, they may say.
Until the Democrats offer a compelling working-class vision, those living paycheck to paycheck have reasons to stick with Trump who, at the very least, has buried the free-trade mantra that working people know has destroyed so many jobs and damaged their communities.
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Even Those Who Believe Tariffs Are Useful Think Trump's Trade War Makes 'Zero Sense'
One economist warned the tariffs would amount to the "largest tax increase... that has ever been imposed" on working-class families.
Feb 03, 2025
The trade war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched over the weekend by announcing sweeping new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China drew intense criticism from experts and analysts across the ideological spectrum, including those who believe strategically deployed tariffs can help protect domestic jobs and workers.
"Tariffs are a powerful, effective tool to deliver certain goals. But Trump's Canada/China/Mexico tariffs make zero sense. And even undermine tariffs' legit uses," Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote on social media late Sunday, expressing agreement with United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.
Fain said in a
statement that the UAW "supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy," pointing specifically to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor agreement that Trump negotiated during his first White House term.
The union does not, however, "support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy," Fain continued. "The national emergency we face is not about drugs or immigration, but about a working class that has fallen behind for generations while corporate America exploits workers abroad and consumers at home for massive Wall Street paydays."
The officially stated purpose for Trump's 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10% tariffs on Chinese imports is to confront what the White House described as the "extraordinary threat" posed by the movement of migrants and drugs across the southern and northern U.S. borders.
But Wallach argued Sunday that using tariffs to address immigration and the flow of drugs "is like trying surgery using a saxophone—wrong tool!"
"After decades of an American trade policy run by and for the largest corporations and to the detriment of American workers, independent farmers, and small businesses, we certainly do need a new approach," she added. "But simply imposing 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and another 10% on China will not rebuild American manufacturing/create U.S. manufacturing jobs or raise wages. Particularly, if such tariffs can be axed, lowered, or upped at the president's whim for reasons unrelated to trade/jobs."
"While tariffs can play a constructive role in protecting U.S. jobs and enforcing labor and environmental standards when part of a strategic industrial policy, Trump's approach is neither strategic nor appropriate."
Trump told reporters late last week that he is "not looking for a concession" in response to the new tariffs, which prompted swift retaliation from Canada, Mexico, and China.
The announced tariffs, which are set to take effect on Tuesday, also shook U.S. and global equity markets as Trump threatened additional duties against imports from European Union nations and admitted Americans could experience "some pain" stemming from the trade war. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that her country reached an agreement with Trump to delay implementation of the tariffs on Mexican imports for a month, reportedly in exchange for the deployment of 10,000 Mexican soldiers to the country's northern border.
Contrary to Trump's insistence that tariffs are paid by targeted nations, they are in fact paid by U.S. importers, who then either eat the costs or pass them on to consumers through higher prices. Economist Dean Bakernoted that the new tariffs amount to "a tax increase of roughly $200 billion a year ($1,600 per family) that will overwhelmingly be paid by moderate-income and middle-income families."
"It is the largest tax increase on them that has ever been imposed," Baker wrote Sunday. "And retaliation from both countries is likely to impose additional costs."
Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "no matter the intractable problem, Trump's go-to playbook is to bully our neighbors through tariffs and to scapegoat immigrants."
"Instead of addressing the actual causes or seeking real solutions to the complex public health crisis surrounding fentanyl, Trump jumps to impose damaging and self-defeating across-the-board tariffs and to spout more hateful rhetoric that dehumanizes our immigrant neighbors," said St. Louis. "While tariffs can play a constructive role in protecting U.S. jobs and enforcing labor and environmental standards when part of a strategic industrial policy, Trump's approach is neither strategic nor appropriate."
"Using tariffs to bully countries to advance an anti-immigrant and anti-humanitarian agenda will do nothing to support U.S. workers and will make our immigrant neighbors less safe," she added.
The tariffs also drew backlash from the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board, which slammed the president for launching "the dumbest trade war in history."
"Bad policy has damaging consequences," the editorial board wrote late Sunday, "whether or not Mr. Trump chooses to admit it."
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Beware the Faux Populism of Corporate Democrats
For the Democrats to become a truly populist party, an entirely new wave of working-class candidates must come to the fore. But that won't just happen. A movement must be built and harnessed.
Jan 08, 2025
Donald Trump’s victory is causing James Carville, the outspoken raging Cajun who was Bill Clinton’s campaign manager in 1992, to call for the Democratic Party to go all in on a populist agenda. He wrote recently in the New York Times,
“Go big, go populist, stick to economic progress, and force them [Republicans] to oppose what they cannot be for. In unison.”
Is Carville really agreeing with the Center for Working Class Politics, which in October published the results of their YouGov survey, “Populism Wins Pennsylvania?” That report found that:
“… working-class Pennsylvanians responded most favorably to populist messages and messages that emphasized progressive economic policies. What’s more, we found little evidence that focusing on economic populism risks decreasing voter enthusiasm among core Democratic constituencies outside the working class.”
Ezra Klein, another Democratic Party influencer, picked up on that survey just before the election in November, but then dismissed it as an outlier: “Surveys like that should be treated with some skepticism”, he wrote. “The Harris team is running plenty of its own polls and focus groups and message tests.”
But the results of elections matter, and there is now a chorus of Democratic Party nouveau populists, including Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton’s close advisor, who went on to earn tens of millions on Wall Street.
It’s time to take a deep breath and recall how these recently minted populists helped to create the very conditions that crushed the working class. As former Senator Sherrod Brown discovered in Ohio, to this day, workers still blame the Democrats for NAFTA, the 1994 trade deal that Clinton, Carville, and Emanuel pushed that ended up costing millions of U.S. jobs.
It’s time to take a deep breath and recall how these recently minted populists helped to create the very conditions that crushed the working class.
Emanual seems these days to have become a closet Sanders supporter, claiming that Obama was way too soft on the bankers who crashed the economy in 2008:
Not only was no one held accountable, but the same bankers who engineered the crisis were aggrieved at the suggestion of diminished bonuses and government intervention. It was a mistake not to apply Old Testament justice to the bankers during the Obama administration, as some called for at the time.
Some did, at the time, but Emanuel did not. Buy hey, people do change, don’t they? Why shouldn’t we believe that the old Democrats can become real populists?
Let’s start with an understanding of how that Harris polling could have been so wrong. Why did their results cause them to shy away from the kind of strong populism that the Center for Working Class Politics found attracted the most working-class support in Pennsylvania? A state Harris had to win.
I don’t know the Harris pollsters personally, but I do know how the Center for Working Class Politics operates. They are meticulous. They know that their polls will be ripped apart by establishment academics and party gatekeepers, so they can’t make mistakes. They can’t let their own personal beliefs tilt the survey towards what they’d like to believe is true. Their goal is to ask the questions others aren’t asking, to better reflect the opinions of people of all types about working class values and beliefs.
Not so with the pollsters who cashed in on the Harris campaign. They know what their client wants to hear (and is capable of hearing). And it’s not that a strong anti-Wall Street message sells, and therefore that she should mercilessly attack what Sanders calls “the billionaire class.” After all, Harris made a public point of holding a Wall Street fundraiser in the middle of her campaign, and her staff made clear that Wall Street helped to shape her agenda. Her brother-in-law, Tony West, was special adviser to her election campaign, and has deep ties to Wall Street through Uber and Pepsico.
It’s not that Democratic Party pollsters cooked the books. They just knew to ask questions that hovered within the corporate Democratic comfort zone. They didn’t ask the strongest populist questions because they didn’t think those results would be welcomed within the campaign.
I once saw this process in action. I was watching a focus group through a one-way mirror. The topic was healthcare in the leadup to Obamacare, but it was stunning to see how the discussion was shaped by the types of questions the facilitators asked. They limited them to various types of health insurance and avoided more radical reforms of the healthcare system.
At one point a younger Black man expressed his frustration: “Why all this talk about insurance? I’m interested in health care and getting access to it.” He was thanked for his comment and then ignored, while I yelled at the mirror, “Talk about Medicare for All!” It didn’t happen because the group paying for the focus group, as well as the pollster, didn’t think Medicare for All was feasible, and therefore refused to discuss it.
Today, the Democratic elites not only run away from Medicare for All, but they refuse to acknowledge their financial ties to Wall Street. They are more than comfortable, however, accepting large consulting and speaking fees from what should be the targets of their populism. This goes back to Bill and Hillary Clintons’ tone-deaf acceptance of $153 million in speaking fees, including 39 speeches from the very banks that crashed the economy in 2008. During Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign she collected $1.8 million for eight speeches to Wall Street banks.
For the Democrats to become a populist party, an entirely new wave of working-class candidates must come to the fore. And for that to happened, we need a working-class movement that forms outside of the two parties and demands economic justice for all...
It's not hard to understand. The Wall Street barons who pay the speaking fees are the same kind of people who went to Yale with Hillary and Bill. They’re all from the same newly minted class of highly successful strivers. If there were any working-class roots in their backgrounds, they withered long ago. Nearly all Democratic Party elites are swathed within this moneyed class. During their leadership of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, author David Halberstam called them “the best and the brightest.” Now they are just the richest. In this milieu, light years away from the working class, getting $225,000 per speech seems like a trifle.
But let’s try to be fair. Can’t the party change its stripes now that Democratic influencers are talking populism in the wake of Trump’s victory?
Unfortunately, I don’t think their talk is credible. It’s doubtful that Carville, Klein, and Emanuel are capable of offering a sustained anti-Wall Street message. They are different from Bernie Sanders, and not just because of their word choices. It’s about their entire careers, the things that made them who they are, their entire way of being. Sanders has been an overt social democrat all his adult life. It’s obvious that he means what he says. He says it over and over again. He really couldn’t care less what Wall Street thinks about him.
As for the nouveau populists, I’m waiting for Carville to say, “Look I was dead wrong when I helped Bill Clinton undermine unions through NAFTA.” Or for Emanuel to confess that “I was wrong to take millions in Wall Street fees while workers were losing their jobs through mergers, leveraged buyouts, and stock buybacks.” Or for Ezra Klein to admit in print that the Center for Worker Class Politics, “were right about populism. The Harris pollsters were wrong, and I was at fault for dismissing their solid work.”
Or maybe the Democrats could finally show some outrage about Wall Street-induced mass layoffs that are destroying the livelihoods of working people. (For more information, please see Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
For the Democrats to become a populist party, an entirely new wave of working-class candidates must come to the fore. And for that to happened, we need a working-class movement that forms outside of the two parties and demands economic justice for all, as the original American populists, the Peoples Party, did in the 1880s. Today, that might look like a sustained, organized version of Occupy Wall Street, which fights against mass layoffs caused by Wall Street’s greed and for a $20 federal minimum wage.
Meanwhile, get ready for more faux populism from Democratic Party elites while Wall Street feasts on the riches Trump showers upon them.
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Revenge of the Deplorables?
Think about it this way, maybe it's the Democratic Party which has become deplorable to the working class.
Nov 20, 2024
Did the working class, especially its white members, elect Donald Trump again because they are basically racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic? Are they craving a strongman who can protect white supremacy from a flood of immigrants and put the woke liberals in their place? Didn’t Harris lose primarily because she’s a woman of color?
More than a few progressives, as well as the New York Times, believe these are plausible explanations for Harris’s defeat. I’m not so sure.
The working class started abandoning the Democrats long before Trump became a political figure, let alone a candidate. In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the working-class vote; In 1996, Clinton 50 percent; In 2012, Obama 40.6 percent; and in 2020, Biden received only 36.2 percent.
This decline has little to do with illiberalism on social issues. Since Carter’s victory, these workers have become more liberal on race, gender, immigration and gay rights, as I detail in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers.
These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.
Furthermore, my research shows that mass layoffs, not illiberalism, best explains the decline of worker support for the Democrats. In the former Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for example, as the county mass layoff rate went up the Democratic vote went down. The statistical causation, of course, may be off, but the linkage here between economic dissatisfaction and flight from the Democratic Party is straightforward.
Did the Working Class Give Trump 1.9 Million More Votes?
Trump improved his vote total from 74.2 million in 2020 to 76.1 in 2024, an increase of 1.9 million. Did the white working class support him more strongly this year?
No. According to the Edison exit polls, Trump’s share of the non-college white vote dropped from 67 percent in 2020 to 66 percent in 2024. (For 2020 exit polls see here. For 2024 see here.)
In fact, the largest increase for Trump this year came from non-white voters without a college degree. Trump’s percentage of these voters jumped from 26 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024. These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.
The Defection of the Border Democrats
Perhaps the most astonishing collapse of the Democratic vote is found in the Texas counties along the Rio Grande. Take Starr County, population 65,000, most of whom are Hispanic. Hillary Clinton won that county by 60 percent in 2016. Trump won it this year by 16 percentage points, a massive shift of 76 percentage points, almost unheard of in electoral politics. Trump won 12 of the 14 border counties in 2024, up from only five in 2016. Interviews suggest that these voters are very concerned by uncontrolled border crossings, inflation, and uncertainly in finding and maintaining jobs in the oil industry.
(I hear whispers among progressives that Hispanic men just don’t like women in leadership positions. Yet just across the Mexican border, Hispanic men seemed quite comfortable recently electing a female president.)
The Big Story Is the Overall Decline of the Harris Vote
Harris received 73.1 million votes in 2024, a drop of 8.3 million compared with Biden’s 81.3 million votes in 2020. That’s an extraordinary decline. Who are these voters who decided to sit it out?
So far, while the final votes are tallied and exit polls are compiled, it looks like they are a very diverse group—from young people upset about the administration’s failure to restrain Israel to liberals who didn’t like watching Harris go after suburban Republicans by palling around with arch-conservatives Liz and Dick Cheney.
Personally, I think many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them. Harris was viewed as both a member of the establishment and a defender of it, and the establishment hasn’t been too considerate of working-class issues in recent decades.
Many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them.
Harris’ highly publicized fundraising visit to Wall Street certainly made that clear. And in case we missed that signal, her staff told the New York Times that Wall Street was helping to shape her agenda. It’s very hard to excite working people by arguing, in effect, that what’s good for Wall Street is also good for working people.
The John Deere Fiasco
For me, the symbolic turning point was the Harris campaign’s pathetic response to the John Deere company’s announcement about shipping 1,000 jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump jumped on it right away, saying that if Deere made that move, he would slap a 200-percent tariff on all its imports from Mexico. If I were a soon-to-be-replaced Deere worker, that would have gotten my attention.
The Harris campaign responded as well, but not in a way that would convince workers that she really cared about their jobs. The campaign sent billionaire Mark Cuban to the press to claim such a tariff would be “insanity.” He and the campaign said not one word about the jobs that would soon be lost. Trump promised to intervene. Harris promised nothing.
The sad part is that the Biden-Harris campaign could have at least tried. They had the power of the entire federal government. They could have cajoled and bullied, waved carrots and sticks. In short, they could have easily made a visible public effort to prevent the export of those good-paying jobs by a highly profitable corporation that was spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street and it’s CEO. Here was a chance to defend jobs against overt greed. Instead, they essentially told working people that Harris wasn’t willing to fight for those jobs.
But Didn’t the Working-Class Abandon Sherrod Brown?
I haven’t yet found any comprehensive demographic data about Brown and his working-class support. We do know, however, that he ran well ahead of Harris. Brown lost his Senate race by 3.6 percent in Ohio compared to a Harris loss by 11.5 percent.
Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.
Brown knew that he was carrying a heavy load as a Democrat, especially because of the passage of NAFTA, which was finalized during Bill Clinton’s presidency. As Brown put it: “The Democratic brand has suffered again, starting with NAFTA…. But, what really mattered is: I still heard it in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.”
Brown, as a loyal Democrat, was stuck with that dubious brand, and with Harris, as she was clobbered in Ohio. Tom Osborne, the former local labor leader and a refreshing political newcomer, shed the Democratic Party burden by running as an independent in Nebraska. He lost his Senate race by 6.8 percent compared to 10.9 percent for Harris. Brown did better than Osborne but it’s highly likely that both did much better than Harris with working-class voters.
Maybe the Democratic Party Has Become Deplorable to the Working Class
Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.
- Biden’s ego kept him in the race at least a year past his sell-by date and the Democratic leadership did not have the nerve to act until he completely lost it in the June debate with Trump. (A few of us urged Biden to step aside in November 2023).
- Harris was anointed without going through a rigorous primary process. She failed miserably at that in 2020, and she probably was not the strongest potential Democratic candidate this time around either.
- Refusing to run on a strong progressive populist platform pushed much of the working-class to Trump. The Center for Working Class Politics survey of Pennsylvania showed that a strong populist message was the most popular among working class voters, and that the Harris focus on democracy was the weakest issue for that group. But the Harris campaign doubled down on the democracy issues late in the campaign and paid the price.
- The failure to say anything at all about mass layoffs and stock buybacks was nothing short of political malpractice.
- And placating Wall Street was flat out deplorable.
Will the Democrats learn from this debacle and change their ways? I’m not optimistic. They are the defenders of the liberal elite establishment and have grown very comfortable (and prosperous) in that role.
We may not have all the data we desire or need as yet, but we know this much: something has to change. And that change is not going to come from the old guard of this deplorable Democratic Party establishment.
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30 Years After NAFTA, UAW Launches Solidarity Project for Mexican Autoworkers
"For decades, corporations have taken advantage of inadequate trade laws to offshore thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico, where worker wages and conditions have long been suppressed."
Feb 23, 2024
Thirty years after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the largest U.S. autoworkers union on Friday announced the establishment of a solidarity initiative to support industry workers in Mexico "fighting for economic justice and improved working conditions."
United Auto Workers (UAW) said the new project "will provide resources to Mexican workers and independent unions in Mexico, and aims to strengthen cross-border solidarity between U.S. and Mexican workers."
"Under NAFTA, Mexico's automotive workforce has grown sevenfold, while wages, benefits, and working conditions continue to fall behind."
Signed in 1993 and taking effect the following year, NAFTA eliminated virtually all tariffs and trade restrictions between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The leaders of the three nations, including then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, promised the pact would create millions of new jobs and lift living standards.
But while U.S. trade with Mexico has more than tripled in the decades since the treaty went into effect, the income gap between the two countries is wider today than when the treaty was signed, while American and multinational corporations have profited tremendously from lower trade barriers and labor costs as production has shifted south of the border.
"Under NAFTA, Mexico's automotive workforce has grown sevenfold, while wages, benefits, and working conditions continue to fall behind," the UAW said on Friday.
Wages for U.S. workers have also suffered as automakers cite the need to remain competitive with their own Mexican operations.
"For decades, corporations have taken advantage of inadequate trade laws to offshore thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico where worker wages and conditions have long been suppressed," the UAW said.
Meanwhile, the union noted that "corporations use the threat of offshoring jobs as a cudgel to beat back worker discontent and organizing efforts in the U.S."
Cross-border solidarity was a key component of last year's six-week UAW strike at the Big Three U.S. automakers. Rank-and-file workers at General Motors' plant in Silao, Guanajuato organized to block corporate efforts to shift production to Mexico as a strikebreaking tactic.
The strike ended with the UAW and the Big Three agreeing to a new contract widely hailed by union members.
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Trinational Solidarity Can Protect Mexican Food Sovereignty From GM Corn
U.S. and Canadian civil society groups are supporting the successful efforts of the “Sin Maíz No Hay País” (“Without Corn There’s No Country”) campaign to protect cultural heritage and biodiversity.
Dec 17, 2023
This coming January 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the trade pact originally known as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, now called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It also marks the 30th anniversary of the historic Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico that denounced the pact over concerns about threats to Indigenous people and food security.
Three decades later, it’s clear the Zapatistas were right.
For Mexico, NAFTA meant abandoning food sovereignty in favor of imports of basic grains, causing an increase in inequality and migration. It meant abandoning the countryside and opening borders to trade, creating a vacuum that organized crime has filled.
Trinational civil society organizations warned 30 years ago that the free trade model could destroy age-old farming traditions. Today they are demanding that Mexico stand up to the pressure of the agribusiness oligopolies and stop what could be the final blow to Mexican food culture.
But, for a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations—such as Bimbo, Maseca, Monsanto, and Cargill—NAFTA has delivered huge profits.
La Jornada reports that, today, food shortages and dependence continue to worsen while imports of basic grains in Mexico are growing to unprecedented levels—accounting for more than half of consumption.
In 2020, the three North American governments renegotiated some aspects of NAFTA. But as La Jornada op-ed coordinator and columnist Luis Hernandez Navarro explained then, “in the agricultural area, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is more of the same, but worse. It is a central instrument for oligopolies to strip control of farmers’ seeds from those who have developed and cared for them for thousands of years. It’s a key piece of the neoliberal order in the region.”
Thus, under the USMCA, Mexico now has to defend itself tooth and nail against plans of the United States, supported by Canada, to flood the country with genetically modified corn.
Last August, the United States filed a claim under the treaty’s dispute settlement framework over a February 13, 2023, Mexican government decree that prohibits the use of biotech corn in tortillas and dough and phases out its use in all products for human and animal consumption.
The U.S. government charges that Mexico’s anti-GM corn policy lacks sufficient scientific basis and undermines the market access that the country agreed to in the trade treaty.
This attack on Mexican sovereignty has reactivated the trinational solidarity of Mexican, American, and Canadian organizations—a transcontinental bond strengthened in the decades since NAFTA was negotiated behind the people’s backs.
U.S. and Canadian civil society groups are supporting the successful efforts of the “Sin Maíz No Hay País” (“Without Corn There’s No Country”) campaign to protect cultural heritage and biodiversity by preventing the planting of GM corn and the use of the herbicide glyphosate over potential risks to human health, the environment, and the country’s biocultural diversity. In one form of solidarity, they’ve submitted a series of statements to the trade dispute process.
As Karen Hansen-Kuhn of the U.S.-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy puts it, “whether or not the dispute panel accepts these statements, the range of topics covered will enrich the public debate on how trade rules could limit or enable sustainable solutions that promote public health, human rights, and economic opportunities.”
The organizations’ statements emphasize the insufficient research on the safety of GM corn for human consumption and the risks of glyphosate. They also emphasize the contradiction between the U.S. claim against Mexico and other key provisions of the treaty, which the United States should not be treating as mere decorations.
For example, Article 32.5 of the USMCA states that the treaty does not prevent a party from adopting or maintaining a measure that it deems necessary to comply with its legal obligations to Indigenous peoples, as well as protections for biological diversity in the chapter on the environment.
The statements emphasize the cultural and environmental risks of GM corn’s proliferation in Mexico, considering the diversity of over 59 native corn varieties that Indigenous peoples have constantly labored to diversify and adapt. They explain that the Mexican policy does not discriminate against U.S. producers, and in fact, these producers are profiting from increased exports of non-GM corn to Mexico.
A support statement led by Rick Arnold of the Council of Canadians—a network of tens of thousands of members from coast to coast and supported by Common Frontiers, a broad network of Canadian organizations—critiques the cozy relationship between their own government and large agribusinesses.
“As Canada joins the U.S. in challenging Mexico to stop its planned phaseout of genetically modified corn for human consumption,” they write, “a too-close collaboration between federal government departments and the biotechnology industry has been exposed […] CropLife Canada was instrumental in Canada’s new decision to remove regulation from many coming gene-edited GMOs.”
Canadian organizations demand that their government support Mexico in its efforts to gradually eliminate the importation of GM corn, and are calling upon the USMCA dispute panel to rule in favor of protecting health, small farmers, and environmental well-being, as Mexico has done for several millennia.
Trinational civil society organizations warned 30 years ago that the free trade model could destroy age-old farming traditions. Today they are demanding that Mexico stand up to the pressure of the agribusiness oligopolies and stop what could be the final blow to Mexican food culture. Long live international solidarity.
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Biden Should Use the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity to Free the Hemisphere From ISDS
One of the most controversial aspects of the hyperglobalization era, investor-state dispute settlement elevates multinational corporations and foreign investors to equal status with national governments.
Jul 20, 2023
The president’s extended national Bidenomics tour touted the administration’s break with “neoliberal” policies and the resulting increase in wages, manufacturing jobs, and infrastructure investment. That fêete should extend through the month: On July 1, the United States also celebrated an important rollback of one of the most controversial aspects of the hyperglobalization era, the investor-state dispute settlement regime.
Investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, elevates multinational corporations and foreign investors to equal status with national governments, empowering them to skirt domestic courts and sue governments before panels of three corporate lawyers to enforce special privileges and rights included in trade and investment agreements. The lawyers can award corporations unlimited sums to be paid by a country’s taxpayers—including for the loss of expected future profits.
Foreign corporations need only convince the tribunals of lawyers that a country’s environmental law, judicial decision, or safety regulation violates their extraordinary investor rights. The tribunals’ decisions are not subject to appeal, and the amount awarded has no limit. After ISDS attacks on critical environmental, energy, health, and even racial justice policies, countries have either paid corporations hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds or rolled back public interest policies.
As a candidate, now-President Joe Biden committed to excluding ISDS from any commercial agreement he negotiated if elected. We urge President Biden to be more ambitious.
Shamefully, it was the U.S. government that was one of the world’s major pushers of ISDS, including by inserting it into the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and then other free trade pacts.
Almost 30 years later, more than $859 million in compensation has been granted to corporations in NAFTA ISDS attacks on oil, gas, water, and timber policies; toxics bans; health and safety measures; and more. This does not include demanded compensation in pending claims, such as the Keystone XL case against the United States through which a Canadian corporation currently seeks $15 billion from U.S. taxpayers over the revocation of a permit to build an oil pipeline across North America.
As the record of outrageous ISDS rulings grew and as the United States faced investor challenges that infuriated members of Congress and state and local officials, more scrutiny was focused on the obscure process few originally even realized was embedded in a dozen U.S. trade pacts.
The fight came to a head during the Obama Administration, which was pushing for a massive expansion of ISDS through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The two pacts would have empowered tens of thousands of new foreign investors to challenge U.S. policies and demand taxpayer compensation, while also enabling U.S. investors’ ISDS challenges against dozens of countries.
Opposition to ISDS was a major factor for the Obama Administration’s failure to garner a congressional majority for the TPP in the year after it was signed in 2015. The TTIP was sunk by ISDS opposition in Germany, which had been a major ISDS proponent until being faced with billions in claims in two cases filed by Swedish energy firm Vattenfall over improved coal-fired electric standards and phase-outs of nuclear power.
Associations of U.S. local and state government officials voiced their opposition to ISDS, including the U.S. National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), representing the mainly Republican-controlled U.S. state legislative bodies:
“NCSL will not support Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) or Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with investment chapters that provide greater substantive or procedural rights to foreign companies than U.S. companies enjoy under the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, NCSL will not support any BIT or FTA that provides for investor/state dispute resolution.”
The 2018 renegotiation of NAFTA provided the opportunity to begin the U.S. extraction from ISDS liability. Eliminating ISDS has long been a priority demand of congressional Democrats lawmakers while then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer opposed ISDS for subsidizing the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing jobs and undermining national sovereignty.
The result was NAFTA’s ISDS was altogether phased out over three years between the U.S. and Canada and its scope and reach drastically reduced with Mexico, as part of the July 1, 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that replaced NAFTA.
Much of the world has turned against the ISDS regime as attacks against domestic public interest policies mounted and econometric studies found no proof that countries’ exposing themselves to ISDS liability gained more foreign direct investment.
Numerous countries, starting with South Africa and now including Bolivia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Poland terminated their ISDS-enforced agreements or otherwise reduced their ISDS liability. Brazil refused to enter into such agreements in the first instance.
In 2020, 23 E.U. countries adopted a multilateral treaty to terminate all ISDS treaties among them. And 11 of them, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, and other countries that had previously joined the United States in pushing ISDS worldwide, announced their exit from the ISDS-enforced Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) after ISDS attacks on green energy policies. As a matter of fact, last month the European Commission announced the E.U.’s coordinated exit from the ETC.
As a candidate, now-President Joe Biden committed to excluding ISDS from any commercial agreement he negotiated if elected. We urge President Biden to be more ambitious.
Soon, talks are expected to start for an Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), a forum Biden launched at the June 2022 Summit of the Americas. The United States should use the APEP process to partner with its neighbors to free the hemisphere of ISDS.
With U.S. leadership, APEP could provide the participating countries Barbados, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and the United States a path to liberty from ISDS.
All but two of these countries (Barbados and Canada) have an agreement in force with the United States that includes ISDS. Plus, many have additional investment agreements with ISDS in effect between them. This thicket of deals exposes the countries to multimillion-dollar corporate attacks on public interest policies for a just energy transition and the creation of resilient public health systems that are in the interest of all people in the hemisphere. Recently elected leaders of APEP countries, such as Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia, have also expressed opposition to ISDS.
A U.S.-led ISDS exit via APEP would be a true win-win. The U.S. acting in cooperation with its allies would achieve an outcome beneficial to all and strengthen its ties in the hemisphere in doing so. It would be extremely difficult for Biden officials to find a similar opportunity in any other trade negotiation.
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I'm Sorry, Corporate Profit Outweighs The Right to Choose
What right does our government, our research institutions, or a group of multi-national corporations have to tell anyone what they must eat, what chemicals they must use, and that their culture and environment are of little concern?
Mar 10, 2023
Corporate money has always corrupted the political process in order to create laws and trade agreements that protect corporate profits at the expense of not just American citizens, but citizens of the world.
We can find, perhaps, no better case in point than Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Developed over the decades by seed and chemical companies Monsanto, Calgene, Dow, DuPont, Bayer and others, Genetically Modified (GM) corn, soy, cotton and canola were touted as the solution to world hunger, the key to increased farm profitability, lower pesticide use, and a better environment.
It all sounded good, but none of it was true. The real truth was—and this was never mentioned—that these commodity crops were designed to produce vast corporate profit as they helped usher in a wave of corporate consolidation, loss of small farms, declining rural economies, and a foisting of untested GM food on unknowing consumers.
While these GM crops dominate the fields of North America, the seed and chemical companies saw the world as their target for even more profit. Their grants to university researchers, lobbying pressure and campaign contributions to state and federal legislators made GM the so-called face of "progressive" and profitable farming.
Crop yields did go up with increased application of fertilizer and pesticides, while farm crop prices went down. Farmers got bigger to survive, planted more acres, and saw the GM bandwagon as the only way—produce more cheap grain for a growing world market. A market that would feed the growing confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that, hand in hand with the GM mono-cultures, were driving small farmers, not just in America, but around the world off their land.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) pushed GM corn into the Mexican market, underselling Mexican farmers. Because they lost their way of life, many moved to low-wage factory work in the maquiladoras or across the border into the U.S., looking for work in the fields, CAFOs, and processing plants of the North.
Not only were the livelihoods of Mexican farmers ruined by the dumping of GM grain, but the areas of origin of corn were also put at risk of pollen contamination from the GM imports. Growing corn is a part of Mexico's culture. Domesticated 8,700 years ago it is sacred and a staple of the everyday diet. Mexicans didn't want our GM corn, but in an economy pushed towards depression by NAFTA, people were forced to rely on what was available and affordable.
And NAFTA wasn't the end of it. Today under a new (free but not fair) trade agreement, the USMAC, the U.S. aims to force Mexico to not only accept GM corn, but also to overturn their ban on the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), a probable carcinogen. Mexico wants neither, they want to grow their own non-GM corn and to import only non-GM corn to meet domestic demand. Glyphosate also threatens biodiversity, not just of their native corn, but of pollinators—the bees, butterflies, and birds that winter in Mexico—so why would they want either?
Yet under USMAC, the Biden administration, through the US Trade Representative, said they would take all steps to enforce U.S. rights. The rights of the U.S. and the rights of Mexico will, in all likelihood, come down to the trade tribunals and the bullying of the U.S. government and its unending support of U.S. corporations and agricultural trade groups. The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), note that allowing the ban to move forward (or in simple language, allowing Mexico to protect their farmers, their environment, and their culture) would be catastrophic to America's corn producers, but their real concern lies not with a potential drop in U.S. farm income, but rather a reduction of corporate profit.
America's corn producers can grow the non-GM corn Mexico would like to buy and they would be paid a premium to do so. But the power of the seed and pesticide corporations, the multi-national grain companies, and industry trade groups like NGCA make growing and marketing of non-GM corn more difficult. Growers of non-GM corn must bear the entire burden of preventing any contamination and U.S. farmers in general are trapped in a system of GM mono-cultures and CAFOs that are immensely profitable for agri-business while the growers produce commodities at prices so low their very survival depends on taxpayer-funded subsidy payments.
What right do we have to force our excess production on the people of Mexico who don't want it? What right does our government, our research institutions, or a group of multi-national corporations have to tell anyone what they must eat, what chemicals they must use, and that their culture and environment are of little concern? Short answer, Mexico has every right under USMAC to reject GM corn from the United States.
Yet—as has been the case for over 30 years—sorry, but corporate profit outweighs anyone's right to choose and the U.S. government will do whatever it takes to keep corporate profits flowing.
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