Rethink Trade: Why Progressives Must Reclaim the Trade Debate From Trump
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Aug. 14 11:00 AM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Aug. 14 11:50 AM (Eastern)
Trump was elected by flipping Midwestern states with appeals to working-class voters on trade. After decades of corporate-rigged trade policies, the pain is real—but Trump’s agenda isn’t the fix. He has pushed trade policies benefiting Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Oil, and Wall Street. And as he makes trade a centerpiece of his administration, manufacturing and service job outsourcing continues. Worse, Trump’s agenda includes special interest handouts that could handcuff domestic progressive priorities for years to come. We must unite to call out Trump’s broken promises and failed policies and elevate our contrasting progressive trade alternatives that put people and the planet first.
Moderator
Lori Wallach
Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. A 25-year veteran of congressional trade battles starting with the 1990s fight over NAFTA, she was named to the “Politico’s 50” list of thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016 for her leadership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership debate. Wallach is an internationally recognized expert on trade with experience advocating in Congress and foreign parliaments, trade negotiations, courts, government agencies, the media and in the streets. Dubbed “the Trade Debate’s Guerrilla Warrior” in a National Journal profile and “Ralph Nader with a sense of humor” in a Wall Street Journal profile, she combines a lawyer’s expertise on the terms and outcomes of agreements with insight from the front lines of trade debates. Wallach’s specialty is translating arcane trade issues into accessible language.
Wallach has testified on NAFTA, WTO, and other globalization issues before 30 congressional committees and appeared as a trade commentator on MSNBC, Fox, CNN, ABC, Bloomberg, PBS, NPR and numerous foreign outlets. She has been published and quoted in The New York Times, The Economist, Forbes, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Financial Times, and more. A lawyer who has worked in television news and on political campaigns, Wallach is well-informed about the role trade issues played in the 2016 election and the implications for the Trump presidency and 2018 congressional elections as the voters demand action on trade.
Books she has written on trade include The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority (2013) and Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO (2004) and she has contributed to numerous anthologies. She was recently one of three panelists, alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel, at the C-20 Summit titled “Civil 20 Dialogue with the G20 Presidency” which addressed the most pressing globalization challenges of the 2017 G20 Summit.
Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a U.S. national coalition of consumer, labor, environmental, family farm, religious, and civil rights groups representing over 11 million Americans, and serves on its board. Wallach is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School.
Panelists
Rep. Ro Khanna
Congressman Ro Khanna represents California’s 17th Congressional District, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and is serving in his first term. Rep. Khanna sits on the House Budget and Armed Services committees and is a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Rep. Khanna is committed to representing the people and ideas rooted in Silicon Valley to the nation and throughout the world. For each job created in the high-tech industry, another four jobs are created. The tech multiplier is even larger than the multiplier for U.S. manufacturing. Rep. Khanna will work to ensure the technology sector is at the forefront of U.S. economic policy and strive to provide opportunities to those our changing economy and technological revolution has left behind. To do so, the U.S. must implement policies that will not only create tech jobs in Silicon Valley but across America. This includes job training programs, economic development initiatives, re-wiring the U.S. labor market, and debt-free college to help working families prepare for the future.
Other sessions: The Road to Recovery: Progressive Economic Policy in a Post-Trump, Post-COVID America, #NoWarWithIran and Building an Intersectional, Internationalist Movement
Alex Lawson
Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works. We fight to protect and expand Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and to lower prescription drug prices.