ARTICLE: "Bush Vows Push For Trade, Takes Directors to Task," by John D. McKinnon and Greg Hitt, Wall Street Journal, 12 October 2007, p. A1.
Per the recent post, Bush acknowledges the issue within his own party and says he'll work to fix.
In all fairness, Bush has been fine on trade: fighting most of the right fights, winning some, and doing overall just well enough in a global climate relatively unconducive to deals, primarily because things are humming at 4-5 percent growth worldwide.
But here's the crux he correctly identifies:
"We have lost our confidence in the ability to compete internationally."
And given the overall global economy's health and our relatively robust weathering of the subprime crisis, those fears seem Lou Dobbsian in their self-centeredness.
Economists' outlooks are rosy. The trade deficit declines thanks to weaker buck. Fed budget deficits coming down.
Bush is not leaving us with a bad economic situation whatsoever. It's just his negative foreign policy legacy that we need to address aggressively.
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