I’m up in Ottawa today speaking for the Canadian government’s “Deputy Ministers’ Retreat” along with former Ambassador and Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, Brookings governance policy czar Thomas Mann, and AEI’s trade guru Claude Barfield.
But we quickly learned from local residents that we weren’t the only Washingtonians who had invaded and that John McCain is in Ottawa today as well speaking to the Economic Club of Toronto (though the event is here in Ottawa).
My hunch is that McCain is intending to signal that he’s not interested in re-opening NAFTA and positioning himself as the hyper-free trade globalist.
My hope is that in response, Barack Obama makes a compelling case that there is an economic strategy that drives the benefits of globalization and trade to the sectors of American society that have thus far been gut-punched by globalization. There is a principled “smart globalization strategy” that is neither protectionist nor manically neo-liberal. We need to have that debate, and Obama needs to become a proactive and articulate messenger for what ‘Smart Globalization’ could look like.
Just wanted to add this to the political notebook.
— Steve Clemons
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