Next on Tap: The Trade Debate

Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis introduces the trade debate, which he will moderate over the next few days in Shaping the New Agenda . Trade runs like a fault line through the presidential election. On one side is Republican John McCain who has said he is a deep-in-his-bones free trader who made his first overseas trips of the campaign to Canada and Mexico, the U.S partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement. He backs the three bilateral trade pacts that the Bush administration has already negotiated but which haven’t passed Congress: Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Barack Obama also calls himself a free trader, but he mixes in a lot more skepticism about the downsides of trade liberalization. He has said he would renegotiate Nafta and is opposed to the pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea that Sen. McCain embraces. Sen. Obama says he wants to make sure that ordinary workers benefit from new trade deals. The two campaigns have nominated ... (link)