Post-Bush Unilateralism

From the NY Times, are the promises of populism disingenuous? In an earlier post, I wrote of China's nuclear option.

The Democrats’ vocal hostility to trade is starting to scare many of America’s best friends. As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have bashed China and a variety of free trade agreements, allies who have been yearning for an end to President Bush’s in-your-face unilateralism are worried that a Democratic president may be just as undiplomatic, and unreasonable, when it comes to economic protectionism.

“It is very irresponsible, in my view, to pretend to people that we can disengage from international trade,” Peter Mandelstam, the European trade commissioner, warned in a May interview with the BBC.

It would be a mistake to brush all this off as mere campaign posturing. The United States remains as open to trade as its European allies, and in some areas it has even fewer restrictions. But the question is, for how long?

Despite economists’ assurances about trade’s many benefits, American workers increasingly view globalization as a losing battle against China’s cheap labor and a very personal threat to their wages and jobs. According to a poll this spring by The New York Times and CBS News, 68 percent of Americans favor putting restrictions on free trade to protect domestic industries. That is the highest share since they began asking the question in the 1980s, and 12 percentage points more than in 2000.