Obama, The Quiet American?

This is an awesome article. Another reason why I like Project-Syndicate. Just see here:

From the outset of his presidency, Obama’s defense of a liberal trade regime has been inadequate. He has said repeatedly that exports are good for the US: they create jobs. But US exports are other nations’ imports, so Obama’s argument amounts to telling others to lose their jobs. He needs to remind Americans that imports are also good: he can surely ask his audience to think of jobs in the UPS cargo planes, freight trains, and trucks that carry imports into the American interior.

The main problem, however, is that Obama has been unable to confront, and put to rest, US labor unions’ fear-driven hostility to trade. Nor has he been willing to confront the business lobbies that are willing to hold the Doha Round hostage in order to extract ever more concessions by other countries, even though they know that the trade talks are about to be sucked into the Bermuda Triangle of the 2012 US presidential election.