Democrat Joe Biden is lining up a team of economic advisers who remain committed to their belief that globalization of the United States economy is beneficial to Americans, a report by the Wall Street Journal states.
The report, which interviewed allies of the former vice president’s highest economic chiefs, makes clear that the Biden team is coalescing behind a globalist agenda committed to multilateral free trade, international cooperation, and a halt to the use of tariffs on foreign imports.
The Journal reports:
President-elect Biden’s initial economic picks—most of whom served in the Obama or Clinton administrations—still largely believe in the benefits of globalization and trade, according to interviews and their public statements. Yet they also have grown circumspect about the pitfalls of globalization that Mr. Trump highlighted, including the challenges it imposes on some U.S. workers. [Emphasis added]
For Mr. Biden’s new economic team, the election represents a bid to address the failings of globalization in a more cooperative manner with the rest of the world than Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden has signaled he wants to push allies for help confronting China and press for more aggressive programs domestically to help Americans hurt by trade, and aides have signaled a skepticism about using tariffs as a weapon in trade confrontations. [Emphasis added]
Janet Yellen, Biden’s pick to lead the Treasury Department, has been deeply critical of the use of tariffs that American steel and aluminum companies and their union workers support. Those tariffs were imposed by President Donald Trump along with a slew of other tariffs on Chinese imports.
Yellen’s likely pick to become her deputy at the Treasury Department, has an “international mind-set” as he was a chief negotiator for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal, the Journal notes:
Other pieces of Mr. Biden’s economic team are falling into place. Ms. Yellen’s prospective deputy, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, an economic adviser during the Obama administration, now president of the Obama Foundation, has an international mind-set, having helped Mr. Obama negotiate a trade deal with Pacific allies. The U.S. never joined the trade agreement. [Emphasis added]
Biden’s globalist-centric economic team is a match for his record on issues of American workers and trade.
In 1993 and the early 2000s, Biden vowed support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO), and normalizing United States trade relations with China. The measures resulted in the U.S. losing five million manufacturing jobs and at least 50,000 manufacturing plants, destabilizing communities, and putting downward pressure on wages.
Biden, as vice president, also lobbied for the TPP free trade deal, which would have forced American workers to compete for jobs against workers in Vietnam and Malaysia who are paid cents for an hour’s worth of work.
Trump’s agenda, on the other hand, has centered on economic nationalism with a focus on imposing tariffs on foreign imports, tough-on-China trade talks, and tightening the U.S. labor market to boost American wages.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.