Liberal Talk Radio

Harold Meyerson’s column on the new anti-trade Democrats sort of reinforces my point from the other day that the free trade consensus isn’t going anywhere.

Meyerson spends the bulk of his column laundry-listing the new free-trade-skeptical Democratic Congressmen and Senators, noting that most of them unseated pro-trade incumbents. He also shows how this reflects a growing unease in the electorate on free trade. But he stops short of claiming that this is actually going to have any effect on actual trade policy, save for the fact that the President’s fast-track negotiating authority probably won’t be renewed.

In other words, he’s correct to say that we’ve reached a “tipping point,” where the momentum is shifting — slightly — back to equilibrium. And that’s as it should be. But anyone who thinks that this new Democratic congress is the beginning of a wild, isolationist streak is kidding themselves.