How has corporate power influenced US trade policy? What does a progressive international trade regime look like that empower workers and help grow the economy
Beth Baltzan, former Counselor for Trade and Investment to US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, lays out the original vision for progressive international trade under US President Franklin Roosevelt, and demonstrates why today’s trade regime enables Trump’s tariffs. The current rules were built around neoliberal economics that have failed workers, and as the system falls apart, history is used and abused to justify today’s tariff wars.
Baltzan speaks to Canadians about why the international trade regime has led to growing inequality, as a part of her panel at the 2025 Progress Summit held in Ottawa, April 10th entitled Trade, Politics and Power: What’s Next for Canada and the US?
In the fight against Trump’s Trade War, the empowerment of organized labour is needed to defend jobs and raise wages on the frontlines of this conflict.
Progressive Political Economy is a video series that spotlights progressive economics and political ideas that push for a just and equal society.
Through interviews with Canada’s leading progressive economic thinkers, we lay out alternative approaches to orthodox economic thinking that have lent today’s inequalities and injustices.
From broadly envisioned industrial strategy in the fight against climate change to episodic economic phenomena like sellers’ inflation felt by all during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Progressive Political Economy series brings forward debates and inquiry on today’s major issues while being grounded in working-class, social democratic values.
Valuing people over profits, decommodification, and a political economy that works for the 99%, the ideas shared in this Progressive Political Economy series are a much needed counterweight to Canada’s business-backed economic discourse.
