Skip to main content

labor

Retirement 'Bittersweet' for Union Local President Who Challenged Trump

Brian Slodysko AP
United Steel Workers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones grabbed headlines in December after he publicly accused then-President-elect Donald Trump of lying about how many jobs he was saving in a deal with furnace and air conditioner maker Carrier Corp. During a hyped-up announcement at its Indianapolis factory, had Trump inaccurately said that 1,100 jobs would be saved. The number was closer to 800.

A Globalism of the 1%: Donald Trump Against the World The Birth of a New Nationalist World Order

John Feffer TomDispatch
This is a stunning piece of analysis on how Donald Trump will go to war with the planet (just as he essentially suggested he would in his America-First inaugural speech). John Feffer, author of the unforgettable new dystopian novel Splinterlands, the latest Dispatch Book, explores how President Trump plans to blow up the present world order and give birth to a new kind of internationalism led by a global confederacy of oligarchs. (Tom Engelhardt)

If Progressives Want to Defeat Trump, They Must Win Back Workers

Les Leopold Common Dreams
It's not ok for corporations to pack up and leave. We should have some control over our economic lives and not leave all the crucial decisions to Wall Street and their corporate puppets. Trade deals are bad deals unless they enforce the highest health, safety, environmental and labor standards. The race to the bottom is real and must stop. We need to recapture the job outsourcing issue and rekindle the flames that ignited Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign.

A New Deal to Save Europe

Yanis Varoufakis Project Syndicate
Until recently, any proposal to "save" Europe was regarded sympathetically, albeit with skepticism about its feasibility. Today, the skepticism is about whether Europe is worth saving. The European idea is being driven into retreat by the combined force of a denial, an insurgency, and a fallacy. progressives need to ask a straightforward question: Why is the European idea dying? The answers are clear: involuntary unemployment and involuntary intra-EU migration.

Democracy, Trade, Globalization and Trump

Thomas Piketty; Naomi Klein The Guardian
Rising inequality is largely to blame for this electoral upset. Continuing with business as usual is not an option. People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream of an America desperate for radical change. People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs. Thomas Piketty and Naomi Klein offer up interesting analysis.

Obama’s TPP Would Widen the Divide

Manuel Pérez-Rocha Inequality.org
NAFTA worsened poverty in Mexico. But some did profit from "Free Trade." Mexico now has 12 billionaires. Before our government started selling off public enterprises to cronies to lay the groundwork for NAFTA, we didn’t have one.

Tidbits - July 14, 2016 - Reader Comments: U.S. "Inequality Trap"; Police Brutality and Racial Terror; Sanders and Democratic Party; Brexit; Tair Kaminer; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: U.S. Stuck in an "Inequality Trap"; New Wave of Police Brutality and Racial Terror; Photo That Should Be Seen Around the World; Sanders Delivered Most Progressive Platform for Democrats, Ever - Yet Still a Long Way to Go on War and Military Policy, and Trade Policy Still Needs to be Changed; About Demonstrations at GOP Convention; Brexit; James Green; Tair Kaminer; Austrian elections; Remembering Donald Jelinek; Save the Georg Lukacs Archive...

From Brexit to the Future

Joseph E. Stiglitz Project Syndicate
On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are seizing upon trade agreements as a source of their woes. While this is an over-simplification, it is understandable. Today's trade agreements are negotiated in secret, with corporate interests well represented, but ordinary citizens or workers completely shut out. Not surprisingly, the results have been one-sided: workers' bargaining position has been weakened further, compounding the effects of legislation undermining unions.

food

A Rush of Americans, Seeking Gold in Cuban Soil

Kim Severson The New York Times
American bureaucrats, seed sellers, food company executives and farmers seek the prizes that are likely to come if the United States ends its trade restrictions against Cuba.

books

Another Reading of Milanovic: Worlds of Inequality - Globalization's Winners and Losers

Miles Corak The American Prospect
Branko Milanovic offers us not just a plethora of facts about income inequality but brings them into a sound and rigorous global perspective, showing that what are too often treated as isolated national issues are on a world scale income massively maldistributed. While some nations saw the growth of a middle strata (China, for one) the real increase in world income is owned by the unprecedented 50-percent rise in incomes for the top 1 percent globally.
Subscribe to Trade