Given the rising public concern, “we need more transparency, sensitivity, openness and time” to build public support for trade, Lamy said, arguing that opposition should not be caricatured as merely “Trotskyists or old-fashioned protectionists.”
“It’s a huge political mistake to cry wolf now. We just have to work harder to gain public legitimization for trade in the growing pressure,” he said. “Trade opening works because it hurts, and it hurts because it works.”
Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?
We should no longer buy the statistically strained arguments about F.T.A.s delivering growth and jobs. The evidence just isn’t there, a fact not lost on those campaigning for president.