Capital Commerce

Which Democratic presidential candidate will pull the trigger? Which Democrat will come right out and advocate some old-fashioned protectionism–or "economic nationalism," as some trade warriors like CNN's Lou Dobbs prefer to call it? While both parties have grown more skeptical of trade, the Dems are certainly more so, especially after the last election, where many of their new House and Senate members ran with an anti-free-trade agenda. Now as I noted in my last posting, the recent Democratic presidential debate really didn't touch too much on economic issues. And even if it had, perhaps none of the candidates would have gone beyond the usual: calling for trade agreements to have more labor and environmental standards. But some "fair trade" advocates have gone beyond those ideas, pressing hard for a moratorium on new trade agreements and even reopening old ones, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, so they can be "fixed." Here is one interesting idea, suggested to me by non-Democrat Patrick Buchanan in a recent appearance with him on CNBC's Kudlow & Co. It goes like this, as Buchanan recently explained:

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