Today’s NYT has two companion articles about the impacts of foreign trade. The first focuses on the problems created by a skimpy safety net when jobs are destroyed by foreign competition; the second discusses the failure of Congress to adequately fund transition programs for unemployed workers after China joined the WTO.
I’ve made the point before, but it is worthy of repetition; while both parties are frequently tied to “neoliberalism” by populists, their concepts of “neoliberalism” were actually quite different. The Democrats wanted the victims of globalization to be compensated by the winners, but the Republicans didn’t, and the votes for a more robust safety net were never there. The blue team subsequently received the same amount of blame for its failure to deliver as the red team did for its successful attempts at obstruction.