Shawn 'n Sherrod's progressive trade policy

Mistermix did a political analysis on (some) Democrats and liberals introducing nuance on trade and I agree – nuance is tough in US politics and rarely rewarded. It would be a heck of a lot easier if we could just oppose Trump’s policy and support the status quo on trade, but I don’t think we on the Left side of the Democratic Party can do that. I think what we end up with is a progressive view on trade that differs from both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

I’m in Ohio and both Sherrod Brown and Marcy Kaptur have opposed US trade policy that doesn’t benefit US workers for 30 years, so all of this is very familiar to me. I wasn’t surprised at all that the UAW seized on Trump’s trade moves to promote their view on trade and I expected Sherrod Brown and Marcy Kaptur would too.

Yup. This is Sherrod Brown doing an interview with the New Yorker. As I expected and consistent with his views for the last 30 years, Brown says there’s a third way on trade that benefits workers.

“I don’t want to see the discussion limited to two choices – neoliberal free trade allied with Wall Street or Trump’s irrational, anti worker trade chaos.”

“Media presents us with two choices, Trump’s tariffs or neoliberal bad trade policy. That’s not true, there’s a third way where we have pro worker trade policy”

An example- Elissa Slotkin in Michigan took tons of shit on Bluesky for her proposal to limit imports of EVs from China. Joe Biden put tariffs in to limit imports of Chinese-made EVs, but people who don’t follow trade didn’t know that so attacked Slotkin for promoting what was essentially Biden’s policy. This stuff is complicated and flattening it to Pro Trump or Anti Trump just can’t be done without huge errors of omission.

I would also submit that this trade division is part of a larger argument in the Democratic Party and liberalism. I think we’re sorting into two groups – people who want to return to a Democratic and liberal “status quo” and people who think the status quo is unacceptable and we need an overhaul and revitalization. I’m in the latter group, but I would urge you-all to see this as a discussion where compromise is possible and ALL members of the Democratic and liberal coalition have a say in how it turns out. We in the reformer camp don’t need to kick out the status quo crowd, we can instead negotiate and hammer out a compromise.

We need upper middle class free traders in the suburbs to vote for us and we also need UAW members and populist progressives like Brown to vote for us. Obviously we desperately need wine moms like me because we’re fabulous, but I’m not “the most important” and neither are you. We really can’t afford to jettison the parts of our coalition that don’t align 100% with our personal views. Like it or not, we’re stuck with one another.