Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

The thing is: I know, Trish Regan knows, and Steve Moore knows that:

• If it were President Romney who had negotiated this very same TPP, Steve Moore would be out there stroking his chin and saying that while the TPP agreement no doubt had flaws, it was an important achievement and that opponents to it were Enemies of American Capitalism...

• If it were Ted Cruz, John Kasich, JEB! Bush, Marco Rubio, or Chris Christie who were the Republican nominee, Steve Moore would be out there stroking his chin and saying that while the TPP agreement as negotiated by Obama doubt was a bad thing, it could and would be improved enough by the next Republican president to make it a plus for American Capitalism...

But the marks watching Fox Business do not know this. And Trish Regan is not going to tell them...

For what it's worth: August 2 Fox News Business Talking Points

Thinking About the TPP:

1. Probably a bad thing for the world as a whole:

   • we don’t need to make it harder for good ideas about how to do things productively from diffusing out from the United States to the rest of the world.
   • It’s unneighborly.
   • It’s also not likely to be good for our long run national security…

2. Certainly a bad way to build international institutions.

   • Choices like the term of intellectual property protection should not be set in stone in treaties that require unanimous consent to change.
   • They should be determined by authorities like the WTO…

3. A foreign policy demonstration that we are going to keep being a good neighbor in the western Pacific even if nothing interrupts China’s standing up to its normal status in the world.

4. A substantial plus for America’s upper class considered as owners of intellectual property

   • it provides substantially better protection for America’s ideas
   • whether drug formulas, software programs, movies etc.

5. A priority of the center-right piece of the Republican coalition.

   • As a matter of governance, Barack Obama should not have taken ownership of it.
   • He should have given responsibility for negotiating it to someone like Mitt Romney as USSTR,
   • and then gone to McConnell and Ryan saying: “This is more your priority than mine. What on Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s wish list will you give them in exchange:
     • for not blocking a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and
     • for the 40 extra votes in the House you need
     • because your caucus is a goat rodeo?

6. A small net plus for the rest of the U.S. economy:

   • we will trade a few more low-wage jobs to places like Vietnam and the Philippines than we would otherwise lose,
   • they will pick up a whole bunch of jobs from places like Bangladesh which need them just as much as Vietnam does, and
   • we will export a little more in the way of financial services and entertainment and capital goods exports across the Pacific.
   • But these are small considerations…

7. Certainly not going to reduce the incomes of America’s middle and working classes:

   • but it will widen inequality somewhat,
   • unless it helps to trigger a big economic boom like the kind we last saw in the late 1990s, and before that the late 1960s, that pulls wages up rapidly.
   • And these are small considerations…

How you think about the TPP depends on how you come down on (1)-(4).

(6) and (7)—what the screeching from Teabaggers and Herbal Teabaggers is about—are, really, nothingburgers.

I am weakly against, but can argue myself into being weakly for it in under 15 minutes, given incentive…

Thinking About NAFTA:

1. Something the Mexican government at the time wanted very much:

   • a very important part off being a good neighbor,
   • with the caveat that the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari was not the legitimate government but rather had stolen the 1998 presidential election from Cuahtemoc Cardenas…

2. Supposed to be—we can talk about that some other time—a substantial net plus for the Mexican economy…

3. A small net plus for U.S. economy…

4. A very small net minus forAmerican income distribution:

   • furniture and apparel were going to take a hit, and
   • any workers whose jobs could be done by workers leaving furniture and apparel would take a very small hit
   • but maybe not: maybe more low-wage jobs would be created in Wal*Marts and such than would be lost in furniture and apparel, and
   • at the outside NAFTA’s effects were going to be swamped by the boosts in working- and middle-class after-tax incomes provided by
     • the low-interest rate high-investment economy Greenspan at the Fed was going to deliver in exchange for deficit reduction, and
     • the expansion of the EITC that Gene Sperling, Bob Reich, and Bill Clinton had ensured stayed in the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Bill

5. A demonstration that President Bill Clinton was more than willing to go the extra mile to work with Republicans on good-policy issues…

6. Important, personally, to Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen,

   • who had grown up on the Mexican-U.S. border and
   • always strongly thought that the United States needed to work hard to be a better neighbor
   • as the saying in Mexico goes: “Poor Mexico! So far from God, so close to the United States!”

Given the hand he was dealt in January 1993, Bill Clinton’s decision that pushing for NAFTA plus the labor and environmental side agreements he negotiated that spring was the right decision, as far as whether it, individually, was good or bad policy.

In retrospect, I think he would say that if he cared only about the Democratic Party it was a mistake—but Bill Clinton never wanted to be just the Democrats’ president.

And neither did Barack Obama.

Thinking About Fox News Business:

1. What is your business model here?
   • I had an interesting conversation with someone who had listened to Rupert talk about this back when it was starting. He said: * There is no channel that validates and reinforces the world-view of American conservatives… * A channel that validated and reinforced the world-view of American conservatives would have an audience that was substantial, dedicated, and very sticky… * This is a very profitable market opportunity…
   • Is your business here scaring the pants off of them so that more will keep their eyeballs glued the screen and you can sell those eyeballs to the advertisers for more money?
   • is your business here informing the watchers about the world?

Thinking About the Presidential Election:

1. I am one of the few people who actually has a beef with Hillary Rodham Clinton as a manager and assembler of coalitions:

   • I had five very good economists working for me in 1993 and 1994,
   • who could've contributed mightily to the Clinton healthcare reform policy design initiative
   • but who were largely frozen out.
   • That, however, was the last significant managerial mistake she has made:
     • You can argue that she is pursuing the wrong policies.
     • You cannot--after 1994--argue that she is not pursuing them effectively and not implementing them well.
     • The contrast is truly eye-opening with her predecessors of the other party at State in the 2000s
     • The contrast is truly eye-opening with her predecessor of the other party in the Senate from New York in the 1990s.

2. Back in the Middle Ages, whenever the Venetian Republic elected a new duke--the Doge--part of his installation ceremony had him throw a ring into the sea.

   • This meant that becoming a Doge was like getting married--to the Adriatic Sea, to the Venetian lagoon, to the islands, buildings, and the people of Venice.
     • This is a much better metaphor, I think, than the traditional one of "taking the reins".
     • As if the president is going to sit on our back, stick something sharp and painful in our mouths, and by pulling on it make us go places we really do not want to go…
     • Someone who is going to help us plan, take on some the chores of running the household, fits the office much better…
   • Hillary Rodham Clinton’s spouse says marrying her was the best decision he ever made:
     • "I have led a blessed, fortunate life,
     • “and things started to go really right when I married that girl".
   • Donald Trump's wives:
     • I do not know if a majority of them would do it again,
     • but I do know that they, unanimously, would all insist on getting one hell of a prenup before doing it.