So-called “Fair Traders” have picked up a net increase of 31 seats in Congress, according to a report by Public Citizen's Global Trade. The report finds that Republicans have increasingly adopted fair trade platforms to fend off Democratic contenders.


A total of 34 new fair-traders won seats in the House of Representatives, which represents a net change of 26. Five new fair-trade supporters won Senate seats, a net change of five. The report includes trade positions for candidates in over 130 competitive or open seat races.

 

Public Citizen found that in 2008, campaigning on fair trade was not solely a Democratic tactic. More than a dozen incumbent and open-seat fair-trade Republicans beat back tough primary and general election challenges by campaigning on a fair-trade platform, including with paid ads. In a dozen competitive and open seat races, both the Republicans and the Democrats competed in an “anti-NAFTA off,” battling to be the most critical of the status-quo trade model.

Last week's electoral gains for fair-traders follow a 37-seat net gain by fair traders in the 2006 elections and mark “an unprecedented shift in the U.S. political landscape away from the disastrous trade and globalization policies of the past,” said Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division. “The American public expects a serious debate around replacing the current model.”



In addition to the seats won by first-time candidates running on fair-trade platforms, 15 of the most consistently fair-trade incumbents facing tough re-election battles prevailed. The 15 incumbents with tough races voted the fair-trade position 100 percent of the time, cosponsored the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment (TRADE) Act, or did both. They come from the Republican and Democratic Parties, from the New Democrat and Blue Dog Coalitions, from the Hispanic and Progressive Caucuses and from California to Connecticut, from Mississippi to Minnesota. The TRADE Act lays out a process to review existing pacts, renegotiate them to meet basic criteria and reform negotiating processes and substantive policies to ensure a new model of globalization and trade that can benefit more people.


More than 130 paid television ads calling for new trade policies and attacking supporters of trade pacts such as NAFTA and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) were used by House and Senate candidates in 2008. This compares to roughly 25 ads in congressional races in 2006, when criticism of status-quo globalization and trade policy showed an exponential jump from all past election cycles. President-elect Barack Obama ran a dozen trade ads, nearly all during the general election.


The report also summarizes public polling that documented a growing – and bipartisan – demand for changing the current trade model. Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that a “free trade agreement” has had a negative effect on their families. Majorities oppose NAFTA across every demographic with Catholic, swing, independent and Hispanics voters among the most anti-NAFTA blocs. GOP voters, by a two-to-one majority, agree that “[f]oreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy, because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products.”