Tag Archives: sanders

Pulling out of TPP: the first major foreign policy error of the Trump administration

The Trump administration today pulled out of the 12-nation TPP talks. (123rf / art1980)

Keeping a promise from his 2016 campaign, US president Donald Trump formally pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership today, a 12-nation trade and investment agreement in the works for nearly a decade.

Though the move will win plaudits from both the populist right and the anti-trade left (including Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic presidential candidate) Trump’s move is the first major unforced foreign policy error of the Trump administration. TPP opposition brings together an ascendant protectionist coalition that includes many of Trump’s populist supporters, but also many rust-belt and leftist Democrats and many organized labor officials.

In junking the US role in the TPP, a death knell for the trade accord, Trump has now cleared the way for the People’s Republic of China to set the baseline for trade rules across the Asia-Pacific region, negating hopes from the previous Obama administration to ‘pivot’ the country’s strategic and economic orientation toward the fast-growing region and backtracking on a decades-long bipartisan consensus that the United States takes an open and, indeed, leading approach to the ideal of free trade.

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RELATED: One reason for Americans to support TPP?
Absolving US sins in Vietnam

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Though the general terms of global trade will continue to be governed by the World Trade Organization, regional trade deals allow for countries to deepen trade ties in ways that go beyond the standard WTO rules and to develop strategic alliances.

Trump railed against the TPP from the earliest months of his presidential campaign, arguing that it gave China an unfair advantage:

The TPP is horrible deal. It’s a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone.

But China was never a signatory to the TPP and, indeed, was never party to the 12-country talks that also included stalwart US allies like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. The US national interest in negotiating and signing an agreement like the TPP would have been to create a trade paradigm in the region that seeks to help US interests in contrast to Chinese interests and, of course, to draw both traditional allies and new allies closer to the United States economically and strategically.

If anything, the TPP provided a framework to protect the United States from Chinese competition. To the extent that American manufacturing jobs have suffered as a result of international trade, and from trade with China, in particular, it has come from the decision in 2000 by a Republican Congress and Democratic president Bill Clinton to grant permanent normal trade relations to China (which had previously been subject to an annual congressional vote) and in 2001 to admit China to the WTO, lessening the ability of the United States to deploy protective tariffs against China.

Continue reading Pulling out of TPP: the first major foreign policy error of the Trump administration

Libertarians nominate party’s 1st viable presidential ticket in US history

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson looks on during National Convention held at the Rosen Center in Orlando, Florida, May 29, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Kolczynski - RTX2EQ7N
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson looks on during National Convention held at the Rosen Center in Orlando, Florida, May 29, 2016. (Reuters / Kevin Kolczynski)

Will it be ‘groovy Gary’ or ‘goofy Gary’?USflag

With over five months to go in what’s already become a nasty presidential election, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hasn’t shied away from abusing his competitors, often giving them pejorative nicknames on Twitter and everywhere else on the campaign trail. Amused Americans might wonder whether Trump will welcome the Libertarian Party’s freshly minted 2016 presidential nominee, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, to the campaign with a similarly dismissive nickname as his other competitors — ‘low-energy’ Jeb Bush, ‘little’ Marco Rubio, ‘lyin” Ted Cruz and, most recently, ‘crooked’ Hillary Clinton.

The Libertarian Party nominated Johnson for a second consecutive time Sunday night at its national convention in Orlando, on a holiday weekend when most Americans were more concerned with summertime diversions than politics. But with Johnson leading the ticket, and with Libertarians, however reluctantly, nominating Johnson’s preferred running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld, as its vice presidential candidate, the party has for the first time since its inception in 1972, nominated a viable presidential ticket.

A ‘Never Trump, Never Clinton’ option in all 50 states

No one disputes that it will be an uphill fight, though the Libertarian Party will likely be the only third party to make the presidential ballot in all 50 states. But, at least on paper, the Libertarian ticket looks formidable. Johnson is enough of an ‘outsider’ to harness the same kind of energy as Trump and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side of the race. For now, the Libertarian ticket is the only one with experience in executive government (not counting, of course, Clinton’s eight years in the East Wing as first lady).

Republican-leaning voters who believe Trump lacks the maturity, temperament, tone or experience for the Oval Office will be cheered by the shared ideological values with Libertarians, such as fiscal restraint and limited government. Democratic-leaning voters who mistrust Clinton will prefer the traditional Libertarian social liberalism on many cultural issues, such as abortion, LGBT marriage and drug decriminalization. Sanders supporters, in particular, who credibly hope that Sanders can defeat Clinton in the June 7 Democratic primary in California and who less credibly hope that Sanders can wrest the nomination from Clinton at July’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, will find in Johnson a kindred spirit. Johnson would be smart to target Millennial voters who overwhelmingly backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and who even more overwhelmingly back Sanders against Clinton.

The ticket includes two proven vote-winners who, in aggregate, won four gubernatorial elections in the 1990s and the 2000s as ‘small-l’ libertarian Republicans in Democratic-leaning states. Even before his formal nomination and his decision to name Weld as a running mate, some polls were already showing that Johnson could win up to 10% of the vote in November. The most important polling threshold, however, is 15%, which would entitle Johnson and Weld to participate in the formal series of presidential and vice-presidential debates later this autumn that millions of American voters will watch. That, alone, would be an impressive achievement for the Libertarian Party.

Red governors in blue and purple states

Johnson, who briefly ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination before winning the Libertarian nomination in the same election cycle, served as the governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, coming to politics after a successful business career in construction. As governor, Johnson widely used veto powers to limit state spending and pushed for both marijuana decriminalization and education reform to introduce greater choice and competition among schools.

Johnson can point to his experience spent eight years governing a state with the most proportionally Latino/Hispanic population in the United States (47% as of the 2010 census). In 2016, Latino voters are expected to be crucial in determining the next president. It’s a group of voters than has grown from just 7.7 million in 1988 to 23.3 million in 2012 (and a projected 27.3 million in 2016). Johnson, an avid outdoorsman, Ironman enthusiast and mountain climber who has scaled Mt. Everest, can nevertheless be awkward and a bit wooden on the stump. But he radiates sincerity, and in a race against Trump and Clinton, neither of whom voters seem to like or to trust, his lack of bombast or glib soundbites could appeal broadly, especially among authenticity-craving Millennials.   Continue reading Libertarians nominate party’s 1st viable presidential ticket in US history

Can Hillary Clinton become America’s Mutti?

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton might find in German chancellor Angela Merkel a role model in the era of Trump (State Department)
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton might find in German chancellor Angela Merkel a role model in the era of Trump (State Department)

In 2008, US president Barack Obama won the largest Democratic mandate in a generation, in part, by pledging to change the tone in Washington.USflag

But in 2016, after eight years of increasingly bitter and partisan posturing, it’s Obama’s one-time rival, Hillary Clinton, who now has the opportunity to transcend the hyper-partisanship that began with the divided government under her husband’s administration in the 1990s.

Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party laid bare the long-growing schism among various Republican constituencies. Currently, the two living former Republican presidents (George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush), the party’s most recent presidential nominee (former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney), its one-time 2016 frontrunners (former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Texas senator Ted Cruz and Florida senator Marco Rubio) and the Republican in the highest-ranking elected official — speaker of the House (Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan) — have all refused to endorse Trump.

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RELATED: That transcending ideology thing from 2008?
Merkel did it. Obama hasn’t.

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Despite the promise that the coming general election will be nasty, even by the recent standards of American politics, Clinton, if she’s nimble enough, can become a unifying and moderate figure who can work with both Republicans and Democrats. If Trump loses as badly as polls suggest he might, the Republican Party will be a shambles on November 8. The fight for Senate control was always a toss-up, and a Trump debacle could endanger even Republican control of the House of Representatives.

Increasingly, the debate in world politics is tilting away from traditional left-right discourses, replaced by a much darker fight, for the first time since the 1930s, between populist nationalism and globalist internationalism — and not just in the United States, but everywhere from the Philippines to the United Kingdom. In that fight, Ryan (and Bush and moderate Republicans) have much more in common with Clinton and the officials who will lead a Clinton administration than with Trump.

Make no mistake, if Clinton wins the presidency in November, she’s not going to form a German-style ‘grand coalition’ with Ryan and leading Republicans. Postwar German politics operates largely on consensus to a degree unknown in American (or even much of European) politics. Still, German chancellor Angela Merkel has already paved the way for how a successful Clinton presidency might unfold, and Clinton advisers would be smart to figure out, as the campaign unfolds, how to position Clinton as a kind of American ‘Mutti.’ Clinton is already reaching out to moderate Republican donors, but the challenge goes much deeper — to become a kind of acceptable figure to both blue-state and red-state America.

It’s not clear that Clinton has the same political skill to pull off in the United States what Merkel has done in Germany.

But it’s a rare opportunity, nonetheless, if she can.  Continue reading Can Hillary Clinton become America’s Mutti?

A few thoughts about the New York primary

Hillary Clinton strode to victory in New York, a state that twice elected her to the US senate in the 2000s. (Facebook)
Hillary Clinton strode to victory in New York, a state that twice elected her to the US senate in the 2000s. (Facebook)

The New York primaries are over, and it’s clear that they will be yuuuuuge victories for Republican frontrunner and businessman Donald Trump and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.new york flagUSflag

Of course, New York is central to both politicians’ careers. Trump built his real estate empire in New York City, and he launched his campaign from his now-iconic Trump Tower last summer. Clinton transitioned from activist first lady to public official when she won a seat in the US senate from New York in November 2000, a position she held through her presidential campaign in 2008.

Neither Clinton nor (especially) Trump will become their party’s presumptive nominee, but their victories most certainly give their opponents little comfort. Primaries next week in Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania do not seem likely to change the narrative.

One silver lining comes for Ohio governor John Kasich, who continues to wage a longshot campaign. He easily won second place last night, though Trump defeated him by a 60% to 25% margin. It will be good for at least some delegates, though, as Kasich took all of New York County, which corresponds to Manhattan.

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When will Texas senator Ted Cruz drop out, considering that he’s now playing such a spoiler role to Kasich? (I jest…)

California dreaming

Leaping ahead for a moment, though, it seems now obvious that the real fight for the Republican nomination will take place in California, which will go a long way in setting the stage for a convention where Trump, despite his stunning New York victory, is unlikely to win the 1,237 delegates he needs to clear a first-ballot victory.

California will, therefore, play an outsized role as the final major primary on June 7, just as Iowa and New Hampshire play outsized roles as first-in-the-nation contests.

Forget the delegate count for a moment. Continue reading A few thoughts about the New York primary

No, Bernie wasn’t right about Panama — and offshore havens have little to do with trade

Even before a bilateral free trade deal with the United States, Panama City was thriving as a center of commerce, banking and shipping in the Caribbean. (Kevin Lees)
Even before a bilateral free trade deal with the United States, Panama City was thriving as a center of commerce, banking and shipping in the Caribbean. (Kevin Lees)

During Barack Obama’s presidential administration, the United States entered into bilateral free trade agreements with not only Panama, but Colombia and South Korea as well.USflagPanama Flag Icon

It might surprise Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, but that didn’t transform Colombia and South Korea offshore tax havens.

Panama, like the British Virgin Islands or a handful of well-known jurisdictions (including Delaware), was known as a top offshore destination for foreign assets well before 2012, when the U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement took effect. Today, in the aftermath of the jaw-dropping leak of the ‘Panama Papers,’ a 2011 video clip of Sanders, the insurgent candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is now going viral.

But it’s far from evidence that Sanders was somehow prescient, and the suggestion that the U.S.-Panama free trade agreement somehow led to Panama’s reputation as a tax haven is disingenuous.

The truth is that offshore jurisdictions have been under siege for years, and the United States has been at the forefront of that fight. It began in earnest in the 1990s, a result of efforts to stymie money laundering related to drug trafficking. But it accelerated to warp speed after the 2001 terrorist attacks in response to concerns about the intricate networks that financed terrorism. Both before and after the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development took steps to force many of the worst global offenders, named and shamed on its ‘blacklist’ and ‘graylist’ of violators, to weaken their bank secrecy regimes.

That included, perhaps most notably, Switzerland, once the gold standard of secret bank accounts, which agreed to relent its famous standards of bank secrecy in 2009 and 2010. For the record, neither Panama nor the United States signed a more recent effort from 2014 to introduce greater tax transparency. Yet, under the Obama administration, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has put unprecedented burdens on foreign financial institutions in the effort to root out American tax cheats.

Despite the easy meme about Sanders, the U.S.-Panama free trade agreement was always about free trade.

Continue reading No, Bernie wasn’t right about Panama — and offshore havens have little to do with trade

Four foreign policy arguments Sanders could still deploy against Clinton

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, fresh off a win in Michigan's Democratic presidential primary, debated last night in Miami. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, fresh off a win in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary, debated last night in Miami. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

If there’s one thing we know about Bernie Sanders, he sure doesn’t like Henry Kissinger.USflag

And if there’s one fact that he likes to deploy in his foreign policy case against Hillary Clinton, it’s her vote authorizing the Iraq War 14 years ago, when Clinton was just in her second year as a senator from New York.

But aside from the Kissinger snark and some minor back-and-forth over US policy in Cuba, foreign policy played only a little role in Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, and it’s played an equally minor role throughout the entire contest. On one hand, that’s because the Sanders insurgency has zeroed in on income inequality, the growing wealth gap and the role of wealthy donors in campaign finance. But it’s also because Clinton, whether or not you trust her judgment, is the most qualified non-incumbent candidate in decades when it comes to international affairs. In addition to her service in the US senate, she also served for four years as secretary of state and eight years as first lady. It’s truly formidable.

Yet, given Clinton-Sanders dynamic, there’s still a lot of space for Sanders to make a strong foreign policy case against Clinton, and time after time, Sanders just hasn’t made that case. Maybe that’s politically wise; shifting his emphasis from Wall Street and income inequality would dilute his message with an attack based on issues that seem far less salient to Democratic primary voters.

But it’s true that Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts have always been more hawkish than those in her own party and, often, those of president Barack Obama and vice president Joe Biden (who, according to Jeffrey Goldberg’s amazing piece in The Atlantic about Obama’s world view, said Clinton ‘just wants to be Golda Meir’).

To some degree, the problem with challenging Clinton on foreign policy is that Sanders would largely be challenging the Obama administration, and that’s tricky when you’re trying to win the votes of an electorate that still adores Obama. But Sanders certainly hasn’t shied away from stating clear differences with the Obama administration’s approach to domestic policy.

Moreover, to the extent that Sanders made a clear and cogent case on international affairs, he could claim that his more dovish approach represents true continuity with the Obama administration (and that Clinton’s more hawkish approach shares more in common with a  potential Republican administration). There’s no doubt that Sanders is a talented politician; in one fell swoop, he could use foreign policy to drive a wedge between Clinton and the Obama legacy. That’s a very powerful tool, and it’s one that Sanders, so far, hasn’t been interested in wielding.

Fairly or unfairly, Sanders is tagged as a one-issue protest candidate, and he suffers from the perception that his candidacy’s purpose is to nudge Clinton further to the left, not to win the Oval Office. By adding a foreign policy element to his critique of the Democratic frontrunner, Sanders could bend a more skeptical media into taking him more seriously and show voters that he really can fill out what Americans expect from a president. In the 21st century, like it or not, the president is the chief policymaking official when it comes to foreign policy.

Given the stakes involved, it’s not too late for Sanders to make this case as the Democratic contest turns to larger states like Ohio, Illinois and Florida next week and, after that, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and California. If he wanted to do so, there’s a long list of areas from which Sanders could choose.

Here are four of the most salient. Continue reading Four foreign policy arguments Sanders could still deploy against Clinton

How Hillary Clinton can get her groove back: paid parental leave

One way for Hillary Clinton to align her message and draw support from both the hard left and the center-right is to embrace paid parental leave. (Facebook)
One way for Hillary Clinton to align her message and draw support from both the hard left and the center-right is to embrace paid parental leave at the center of her campaign. (Facebook)

It’s not been a great night for former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is losing the New Hampshire primary to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders by a margin of more than 20%USflag

Though there’s reason to believe that Clinton will bounce back in the Nevada caucuses on February 20 and the South Carolina primary on February 27, there’s one low-hanging piece of fruit that she could pluck that might instantly boost her campaign’s chances. It’s a policy that could attract Sanders supporters, emphasize the historic nature of her candidacy to become the first female president of the United States and put the eventual Republican presidential nominee on the defensive, all at once.

It’s paid parental leave — and the United States is one of the few countries in the developed world that doesn’t guarantee it. The OECD average is 17 weeks of maternity leave, the United Kingdom offers 39 weeks, Mexico offers six weeks, and many European countries offer far more to both mothers and fathers (though not always paid at 100% of one’s income):

maternity leave
(OECD)

In fact, extending Australia’s paid parental leave was at the heart of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s successful 2013 bid to return his conservative Liberal Party to government. Indeed, it was his subsequent u-turn on parental leave that cost Abbott his popularity and, ultimately, his premiership.  Continue reading How Hillary Clinton can get her groove back: paid parental leave

Just how massive was Sanders’s NH primary victory?

NH Democrats

This big.new hampshire flagUSflag

It’s hard to compare one primary contest to another.

Each race has its own dynamics, and the 2008 contest among then-senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards was as different from this year’s race as the 2000 election between vice president Al Gore and former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley.

But if there’s one thing that we can compare, it’s the margin of victory between the first-placed candidate and the second-placed candidate. Exit polls showed that 12% more of the electorate considered themselves ‘liberal’ than the 2008 Democratic electorate, for example, an effect of growing political polarization that surely boosted Vermont senator Bernie Sanders into landslide territory.

But it was a landslide by this measure. The only primary victory that comes close to Sanders territory was then-Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis’s win in 1988 en route to the nomination (but not, alas, the presidency).  Continue reading Just how massive was Sanders’s NH primary victory?

What Iowa taught us about the 2016 Democratic nomination race

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Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has to win over more of the ‘Obama 2008’ coalition if he really wants to win the 2016 Democratic nomination. (Facebook)

Earlier in January, I gamed out what I thought would be the more toughly fought of the 2016 primary fights — that on the Republican side. iowa flagUSflag

By and large, my analysis held up — Ted Cruz and Donald Trump will both live to fight another day and a third candidate (Marco Rubio) will now have fresh momentum in New Hampshire to consolidate ‘establishment lane’ supporters.

Polls, in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses on the Democratic side, showed a very tight race between Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and, as of this post, she’s up by 49.9% to 49.6%.

It’s great news for Clinton, because the Sanders campaign always seemed best fit to states like Iowa (and New Hampshire,  where Sanders is currently projected to win by a double-digit margin).

But 49.9% in a race for a former first lady, New York senator and the 2008 presidential runner-up? Losing by a nearly 4-to-1 margin among young voters, the future of the Democratic Party? Weak tea.

So Iowa is, essentially, a tie.

The most valuable lesson that we learned is that the 2016 election is not just a rerun of the 2008 election, a theory that’s become popular among some commentators.

Very broadly, in 2008, Obama crafted a coalition of three sets of voters: African Americans and Latinos, so-called ‘wine track’ white voters (typically higher income and professional) and the young, while Clinton attracted women and so-called ‘beer track’ white voters (typically lower income). Demographics were destiny, so much so that you could plausibly predict a primary’s winner in 2008 on the electorate demographics alone.

Last night showed that 2016 is scrambling those coalitions. Sanders is winning a dwindling contingent of ‘beer track’ voters (many of whom are trending Republican), a handful of ‘wine track’ voters and the young. Clinton is winning women, minorities and a plurality of ‘wine track voters.’ For example, Clinton leads among those who make over $100,000 in income, Sanders less than $50,000.

Each candidate in 2016 is winning around 50% of Obama’s 2008 supporters and around 50% of Clinton’s 2008 supporters:

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That makes relatively ‘whiter’ states like Iowa and New Hampshire fertile ground for Sanders; it’s a different story in more diverse states like Nevada and South Carolina, to say nothing of California or New York or Florida.

So his post-New Hampshire challenge will be to win over more ‘wine-track’ white voters and minorities.

Many voters still think Sanders doesn’t have the right experience to be president. But he has decades of legislative experience building relationships in Congress and, perhaps most importantly,  executive experience as Burlington’s mayor, where he governed as a pragmatic progressive, championing things like mixed-use housing, green space and bike paths — urban policies that seemed outlandish, perhaps, in the 1980s but are commonplace today. Sanders has left that record completely out of his campaign’s narrative.

Sanders has struggled to demonstrate his understanding, let alone commitment, to the priorities of the Black Lives Matter movement. But even in the second term of the first non-white US president, racial injustice remains stubbornly commonplace in American justice and economic systems, and Sanders must give racial inequities as prominent a role as income inequality if he wants to have any real chance at the nomination.

How Bernie Sanders blew an opportunity on health care reform

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Though Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is surging in some polls, the response to his universal ‘Medicare for all’ health care plan was mixed. (Facebook)

Bernie Sanders might just be the American version of Jeremy Corbyn after all. USflag

On the eve of Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Sanders, the Vermont senator with a self-proclaimed ‘democratic socialist’ charge to win the Democratic presidential nomination, released a more detailed plan for achieving universal health care. By its own terms, the Sanders plan would provide ‘Medicare for all,’ though it actually goes much further by eliminating co-pay and deductibles, adding to the sticker shock of a federal program that would cost $1.38 trillion annually. It also comes with huge tax increases that would give US citizens, in one fell swoop, higher tax rates than many ‘social welfare states’ in western Europe.

Many critics, including those on the left who should be sympathetic to achieving even more universal health care, have been skeptical.

Ezra Klein at Vox chides the Sanders plan for omitting details about how a single-payer system would be forced to deny many benefits and treatments, just as Medicare does today. Paul Krugman at The New York Times calls the Sanders plan an exercise in fantasy budgeting, arguing that it relies on wild assumptions about the savings it can achieve in health care spending through a single-payer system. Jonathan Chait at The New Yorker argues that the next president will invariably face a Republican-controlled House (if not Senate) and that introducing a single-payer system would be impossible.

All of these are valid, reasonable criticisms of the Sanders plan.

But if you really believe that president Barack Obama’s health care reforms are just one step on the way to universal health care and, like Sanders, you are committed to a single-payer system, there was always a much better policy plan:

Lower the eligibility age of Medicare from its current level (65 and older) to allow all Americans aged 55 or older to participate. 

It could have been, for Sanders, a beautiful political maneuver that would put both his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, and congressional Republicans on the defensive, all while having the benefit of being generally great policy.  Continue reading How Bernie Sanders blew an opportunity on health care reform

Eight things Americans should know about the Danish (and Nordic) welfare state

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Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate had barely started when the two leading contenders, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and US senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont immediately clashed.USflagdenmark flag

Over Denmark.

That’s right. Before Iran or Cuba, Syria or Russia, the US Democratic debate began with a minor tussle over a small Nordic country that’s home to just 5.614 million people.

From the beginning of his campaign, Sanders has called for a Nordic-style state that pays for single-payer health care, free education and other state-provided benefits, and he defended the Nordic model as a lodestar for US policy-making on Tuesday night:

Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.

Clinton, for her part, argued that the Danish model wasn’t particularly well suited for the United States:

But we are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America. And it’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequities we’re seeing in our economic system.

Neither candidate necessarily went beyond a surface-level comparison with the Nordics, though.

When Sanders — a self-described ‘democratic socialist’ — refers to the Nordic model, he’s referring to a generic set of policies that describe a typically high-tax, high-services government that provides health care, education, child care, ample family leave, copious unemployment benefits and, in some cases, up to five weeks of annual vacation time for workers. It’s often described as a kind of hybrid system that melds elements of socialism and capitalism. Denmark proportionately spends more than 150% on social welfare spending than the United States — 30.1% of GDP, compared to the US standard of 19.2%.

Increasingly, however, across the Nordics, the rise of center-right and sometimes far-right groups have succeeded in reforming that understanding of the welfare state by trimming benefits and reducing taxes, all while pushing for policies that encourage innovation and easing business regulation. Today, there are center-right governments in four of the five Nordics (Finland, Norway, Iceland and Denmark), and an eight-year, reformist center-right government ended just last autumn in Sweden under the still-popular former prime minister Göran Persson. In three of those countries, governments rely on hard-right and often anti-immigrant parties to support their policy agendas.

Taken together, the Nordics — and that includes Denmark — are generally some of the happiest, wealthiest, most productive and surprisingly competitive in the global marketplace.

But the story of the Nordic model is much more complex and nuanced, and there are reasons why it might work better in northern Europe than elsewhere, including the United States.

Here are eight features of the Danish system, in particular, that help explain some of that context — both good and bad.

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1. Denmark has been ranked the ‘happiest country in the world’

In Danish culture, there’s a concept called hygge, and it’s said that there’s really not an English language translation for it — warmth, coziness, contentment.

It’s one of the elements that motivates the Danish welfare state, and it explains why, for many Danes, consumerism isn’t as important as spending time with family, working reduced hours and using more free time to pursue individual hobbies and non-professional lives.

That explains, perhaps, why a couple of years ago, Denmark was ranked the happiest country in the world.

But it also explains why peculiarly Danish or Nordic or European cultural features do not easily translate in a country like the United States, and why policies based on Danish cultural attributes might not be nearly as popular in the American context.

2. Its reformed welfare state is actually pro-business

The fact of a strong welfare system isn’t necessarily incompatible with a pro-business orientation. As Marian Tupy wrote earlier for the Cato Institute, Denmark today is ranked as an easier place to do business than the United States, boasts a freer trade regime and slightly outpaces the United States on economic freedom.

Companies like Mærsk dominate global shipping, and Danske Bank is a key financial operator throughout northern Europe. But Denmark’s system has also unleashed as much creativity as commercialism. LEGO is a Danish concept, and the country spawned an entire school of designers in the mid 20th century Denmark, most notably the architect Arne Jacobsen. Today, there’s no more cutting-edge trend in cuisine than the ‘new Nordic’ cuisine, and its hub is Copenhagen, which is home to several Michelin-starred restaurants.

It’s true, however, that the Danish welfare state isn’t your father’s Nordic welfare state. Since the 1970s, successive center-right governments, including that of prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in the 2000s, have tried to freeze tax increases or even lower taxes in certain cases, especially for business. Despite the enduring popularity of the Danish welfare state, Danes are increasingly aware of the demands that an aging population will make. So far, reforms include an increase in the retirement age from 65 to 67 gradually over the next eight years, a decrease in the limit for unemployment benefits from four years to just two and certain limits on grants provided to students.

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3. It gets nearly 50% of its electricity from wind power

Environmentalists also take much delight with Denmark. It was a leading developer of wind power as a renewable energy source in the 1980s, and today wind power amounts to 39% of Denmark’s total electricity consumption — and that’s set to rise to 50% within five years. On some particularly windy days, Denmark meets up to 140% of its total electricity needs.

Though the results of Denmark’s renewable energy program give heart to environmentalists, they should also perk up capitalists as well. Wind power is now big money, at least for Denmark, despite the highly subsidized start-up costs of building offshore wind farms. Moreover, its push to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels resulted from a sense of conservative prudence from the aftermath of the 1970s oil shocks.

4. Education, even for adults, is an important public value

One of Denmark’s national heroes is the 19th century philosopher Nikolaj Gruntvig, who is credited with formulating Denmark’s national education theory. That translated, from the 1840s onward, a dedication to the value of public education in Denmark. Even today, Denmark has a tradition of the folkehøjskole, or ‘folk high school,’ where adults can return to education to obtain new skills for their careers or even just for fun or for post-retirement intellectual stimulation.

That’s one of the reasons that free education is such a cherished value in Denmark. But it also shows that the roots of the Nordic welfare system are often centuries in the making. Unlike, say, in the United Kingdom, where universal government-run health care was a postwar phenomenon, the ingredients of the Danish welfare system lie in the rise of social democratic and agrarian political movements in the 19th century, and the communal spirit of compromise and reform goes back to the 18th century of beyond.

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5. Freedom of information is key to government transparency

Scandinavian countries were some of the first countries to enact freedom-of-information laws. Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act dates back to 1766, for example, and Nordic countries have generally pushed to expand the European Union’s freedom-of-information directives more widely. Denmark’s most recent law, the Access to Public Administration Files Act, even includes certain private and public energy suppliers in the scope of what’s covered.

That comes with its own benefits. Denmark ranked first in Transparency International’s 2014 Corruptions Perception Index — the United States ranked just 17th, far behind Denmark, Finland (3rd), Sweden (4th) and Norway (5th). The ethos of good government and transparency infuses every level of government (and it’s one of the motivating themes of the hit television series Borgen, a three-season show about the personal and professional lives of Danish politicians and journalists).

The perception that the Nordics are an essentially corruption-free zone are another reason why businesses are so keen on relocating there.

But it’s also the kind of place where an official like Clinton would never be able to get away with keeping a secret server, unbeknownst to the Obama administration, to conduct official and unofficial state business alike.

6. Family leave policies are quite generous

In Denmark, parents receive a full year of maternity and paternity leave — mothers are guaranteed 18 weeks and fathers are guaranteed two weeks, with a further 32 weeks to be split up as between the two parents as they see fit. That’s aside from a guarantee of up to five weeks of vacation time annually for workers.

Though no one expects Sanders (or anyone else, for that matter) to introduce single-payer health care to the United States, there is a growing sense that the United States should offer at least some basic parental leave. American workers currently have no federal guarantee of maternity or paternity leave nor do they have a right to vacation leave — something that makes the United States an extreme outlier throughout the developed world.

This is one area where there’s cause for optimism. If Clinton, as widely expected, wins the Democratic nomination, she will be well-placed as the first female nominee of a major party to make this a chief policy priority. There’s a great symbolism in the notion that the first American woman in the presidency will also implement the first universal maternity leave policy.

But it’s an issue that could resonate with conservatives as well. In the United Kingdom, prime minister David Cameron and the Conservative Party campaigned on extending tax credits for child care. Though he ultimately abandoned it, former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, also a conservative, campaigned in 2013 on expanding paid parental leave. Certainly, social conservatives and Christian voters who value strong families might also champion a policy. It’s one area where, in an increasingly polarized political scene, both Republicans and Democrats might come to agree.

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7. The population is more homogeneous —
and far less welcoming to immigrants

One of the theories behind the Nordic model’s success is that countries like Denmark have greater civic trust because they have small and, on the whole, homogeneous populations. That’s one of the reasons that critics say a Nordic-style approach would never work in such a sprawling and heterogeneous place like the United States.

But that also points to one of the darker sides of Danish policy.

Only recently, Denmark’s center-right government made global headlines for its unwelcoming attitude to mostly Muslim refugees arriving on European shores. It went so far as to take out Arabic-language advertisements in Lebanese newspapers noting that family reunification might not be possible and that public assistance for immigrants is now lower.

The message is clear — Denmark is not a particularly welcoming place for immigrants. Denmark, notably, opted out of the migration quota system agreed among the vast majority of EU nations earlier this year. In early December, Danes will vote in a referendum that could see the country ‘opt-out’ of certain justice and home affairs standards.

The anti-Islam and anti-migrant Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) won more votes in the recent June 2015 snap elections than any other party, with the exception of former prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s center-left Socialdemokraterne (Social Democrats). As the Social Democrats’ left-wing allies lost votes, it remained for the third-placed center-right Venestre to form a minority government under current prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who depends on the People’s Party as well as other smaller center-right parties to govern.

The rise of the Danish far-right (and the Scandinavian far-right in general) has pushed both of the major parties toward less migrant-friendly positions. Even Thorning-Schmidt tried to co-opt that message earlier this year with billboards proclaiming that migrants to Denmark would have to find work.  One of Rasmussen’s first actions as prime minister was to enact, in August, on a highly divided vote, a measure that cuts benefits by 45% for immigrants who have not lived in Denmark for seven of the last eight years.

Sweden, which remains far more welcoming of migrants, especially Syrians and others from outside the European Union, has not responded to the refugee crisis with the same level of closed-mindedness as the Danish. Nevertheless, growing antipathy toward immigrants (in Denmark and Sweden alike) and increasingly multicultural Nordic populations will certainly test the ‘homogeneity theory’ in the years ahead.

8. There’s not just ‘one’ Nordic model

Generally speaking, it’s a mistake to refer to a single Nordic model, because the five countries that comprise the Nordics are actually very different. Denmark and Sweden, on one hand, spent much of the past half-millennium as colonial powers. Norway, Iceland and Finland, on the other hand, spent much of the past half-millennium as subjugated colonies — Iceland won its independence from Denmark only in 1944, and Norway won its independence from Sweden in 1905. Today, that filters through culture and geography — Stockholm and Copenhagen are imperial cities, while Oslo and Helsinki are not.

Norway’s vast oil wealth, in particular, makes it a special case that has elements of other Nordic states, but also the problems that many petrostates face. Finland’s longtime relationship with Russia gives it a certain sensibility in European geostrategic matters (and that explains why both it and Sweden are still not members of NATO).

Neither Iceland nor Norway are members of the European Union, lest their rich fish stocks be subject to competition from Spanish and Greek fishermen. While Finland is a member of the eurozone, both Denmark and Sweden have retained their own national currencies and control over their monetary policy.

All of which is to say that even Scandinavians can’t agree on which ingredients are most key to their ‘model’ — and that makes its export outside the northern European context all the more difficult.

One reasons for Americans to support TPP? Absolving US sins in Vietnam.

FILE - In this June 8, 1972 file photo, crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk behind them. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
The iconic June 8, 1972 photo that shows 9-year-old Kim Phuc after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong forces. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

There are a lot of reasons to be cynical about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.USflagvietnam

Like most multilateral trade deals, it seems to bring with it all of the ‘warts and barnacles’ that always seem to accompany these kinds of trade deals:

  • Complex enforcement mechanisms (like ISDS) sometimes seem to threaten to override national sovereignty.
  • Agreements too often fail to address poor labor and environmental standards in the developing world and, when they do, enforcing more equal standards is difficult.
  • Ignoble compromises over intellectual property force higher prices for life-saving drugs throughout the developing world and benefit Hollywood at the expense of locally produced culture.
  • In a globalized world where the World Trade Organization reduced many tariffs to nearly zero over the last half-century, free trade deals too often fail to liberalize non-tariff barriers to trade, at least to the extent that proponents might prefer, especially in the most highly protected industries like agriculture and services.

Hillary Clinton, who often championed the TPP when she served as the Obama administration’s secretary of state, came out against the trade deal last week, citing the protections for pharmaceutical companies and the lack of mechanisms that deal with potential currency manipulation. Those are odd reasons, though, as many analysts have noted, and her opposition comes after sustained support for the trade deal when she was in office. If anything, the protections for drug companies are far lower than those companies sought (just five to eight years of protection instead of the 12 years that the United States originally wanted). Moreover, currency manipulation has never particularly been an issue of focus in multilateral trade deals, and it’s doubtful that the US government could have won any serious concessions on currency, even if it tried.

Generally speaking, even if you dislike the TPP’s ‘warts and barnacles,’ there’s still a strong theoretical basis for freer trade. But there’s an even more important reason to support the TPP.

Vietnam.

No country stands to gain more from the benefits of free trade and liberalization than Vietnam. As Tyler Cowen eloquently wrote in April for Marginal Revolution:

It has large numbers of state-owned enterprises, and its policies toward such enterprises could use more transparency and predictability, as indeed TPP would bring.  Most generally, Vietnam is not today a free country.  Bringing Vietnam into TPP would further ensure their attachment to a broadly liberal global trading order.  TPP also would bring free(r) labor unions to Vietnam.

Other analysts agree, and there’s a growing consensus that Vietnam will be among the top winners if TPP becomes a reality. With tariffs on garments and footwear set to fall to zero under the TPP, Vietnamese exports will get a boost in the United States at the expense of China and even other free-trade partners like Mexico, because labor costs are still lower in Vietnam. That will help Vietnam maintain its advantage for low-cost manufacturing, even as multinational companies look to even lower labor costs in Laos and Cambodia. Moreover, despite challenges ahead, a widely cited analysis by the Petersen Foundation identified Vietnam as the country with the most to gain from the TPP:

Vietnam would face significant challenges in implementing an agreement that requires stringent disciplines in areas such as labor and government procurement. It also faces tough challenges in maintaining a macroeconomic environment that permits adjustment and encourages long-term investments. But overall, Vietnam’s participation in the agreement is well-founded.

TPP will, accordingly, increase the diversity of Vietnam’s trading partners and reduce its economic reliance on China. When the Obama administration talks about the benefits of TPP in strategic or even military terms, this is one of the most important points — TPP will lessen China’s hold on the southeast Asian economy, at least in the short term, both to the benefit of countries like Vietnam (as well as Malaysia and even more developed countries like Japan and Singapore).

Greater trade between the United States and Vietnam, and greater trade between Vietnam and the European Union, pursuant to another free-trade agreement concluded earlier this year, is expected to increase foreign direct investment in Vietnam, which could help develop a more high-tech and services-based economy and a more educated workforce.

Moreover, arguably no country in the world has suffered more at the hands of US incompetence during a war that today seems as pointless as it was brutal. From the My Lai massacre to carpet-bombing and the gratuitous use of napalm, the US-led war in Vietnam in the 1960s and the 1970s didn’t even accomplish its goal of keeping south Vietnam free of communism. The Cold War mentality at the time skewed the nature of Ho Chi Minh’s original struggle, initially more about self-determination and nationalism than about communist ideology. No one today would argue that the war was worth the sacrifices of US forces, the South Vietnamese or the North Vietnamese.

Vietnamese president Trương Tấn Sang met with US president Barack Obama at the White House in July 2015. (White House)
Vietnamese president Trương Tấn Sang met with US president Barack Obama at the White House in July 2015. (White House)

With TPP, the United States has a chance to ameliorate some of those harms. It was Clinton’s husband who restored normal relations with Vietnam in 1995, and it was Republican George W. Bush who facilitated Vietnam’s WTO entry in 2007. Pulling Vietnam, through TPP, into the global mainstream economy is the next logical step in reducing poverty in a country that’s growing at an estimated 6% this year, and Goldman Sachs, for example, predicts that the Vietnamese economy will surge from $186 billion (the world’s 55th largest) to $450 billion by 2025, making it the world’s 17th largest.

Continue reading One reasons for Americans to support TPP? Absolving US sins in Vietnam.