Maybe it’s not a surprise, given that it’s a state known for the Wobblies, Dave Beck, and the 1999 WTO protests, but Washington has a certain radical reputation – even if FDR’s postmaster general didn’t actually refer to “the 47 states and the soviet of Washington.”
But apparently state labor council president Jeff Johnson is pining for the good old days, because he just penned a column hating on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement. That’s his job, after all – labor unions love protectionist policies.
But don’t dare argue back to Johnson that, as the most trade-dependent state in the nation, free trade powers Washington’s economy more than anywhere else in the country. He’s just so sick of that argument: “the debate gets dumbed down to this: ‘Washington is a trade-dependent state. This deal will increase trade. We should support it.’”
Boy, talk about dumb. Boeing airplanes? Washington apples, cherries, and wheat? Microsoft software? These are abstractions, and Johnson doesn’t want you getting hung up on all these hypothetical actual products that we could be selling in more countries with fewer barriers, helping Washington families and our economy.
According to Johnson, the TPP “isn’t just about trade and tariffs. It would set the rules for about 40 percent of the global economy and grant international corporations and investors extraordinary new rights.” The TPP does have a lot of “rules,” but rules are not all made the same. The aim of these rules is to lessen the burden on free trade for our products, not make the process more complicated and expensive. That’s a pretty big difference.
Maybe Johnson is just listening to the union members he’s closest with – a big (and growing) chunk of the state labor council is made up of government employees. But maybe some of those private labor members, the ones who want to build things and add to the economy, don’t see it quite the same way as Johnson does.