Mark Begich, the incoming Alaska Senator,  is a self described fair trader.

NAFTA has not worked as predicted, costing an estimated 1 million American jobs. NAFTA, CAFTA and the bilateral free trade agreements negotiated by the Bush administration have helped big business while hurting middle class Americans. Mark believes fair trade policies should include meaningful and fully enforceable consumer, labor, environmental and human rights protections. He favors a tax code that rewards companies for creating jobs in America, not that take those jobs abroad. International trade can be good for Americans, and is a vital part of Alaska’s economy, but it needs to serve middle class families, not just multi-national corporations.

Public Citizen first published Begich's campaign statement here.

Attached is my analysis (pdf file) of today’s BLS report on jobs and unemployment through October in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. I’ve also included my table of nationwide industry-by-industry job losses and gains over the past year, and graphics to puts into context the historic weakness of the jobs market in production in recent years BEFORE the current troubles.
 
I’m glad to discuss details of specific states and markets.
 
A few of the broad highlights are that unemployment has already soared to 9.3% in Rhode Island and Michigan and is 8.2% and 8.0% in California and South Carolina, respectively.

It is unfortunate that some ag groups keep pushing the same free trade agreements.

The American Farm Bureau Federation is for the Colombia, Panama and South Korea FTAs.

National Farmers Union opposese the Colombia FTA, as well as the other two FTAs.

R-CALF USA opposes Colombia and Panama, but has expressed willingess on South Korea if the beef issues are resolved.

China is trying to get its dairy industry compliant, trying to get out the melamine.  The government made this announcement.

“The crisis has put China’s dairy industry in peril and exposed major problems existing in the quality control and supervision of the industry,” an official with China’s National Development and Reform Commission said in a posting on the agency’s Web site.

The government said that it would issue new laws and standards by next October, and that by 2011, “the goal is to have well-bred cows and a mass-producing dairy industry,” according to Xinhua, the official news agency.

My question right now is how much the government subsidizes and/or owns this industry.  The government plows lots of bucks - er remnimbi - into favored industries.  Apples and steel, for example.  And owns half the economy, or so (who knows how much?). 

Is the mass production China dairy industry largely a government construct?  I would guess the answer is yes.

Chris Slevin and Todd Tucker co-authored a January 2007 article, The Fair Trade Sweep, showing that strong Fair Trade candidates significantly outperformed both weak Fair Trade candidates and anti-Fair Trade candidates.  This was an analysis of the 2006 elections when the Democrats re-took the Senate and the House. 

Slevin is now Senator Sherrod Brown's trade staffer.  He was previously with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, which is headed by Lori Wallach.  Tucker is still with Global Trade Watch.

While the piece has a partisan Dem perspective, it does not invalidate the analysis.

[I]n 73 percent of the races where Democrats successfully dislodged an incumbent Republican, the Democrat in the race made a strong fair trade message a campaign priority (receiving either an A+ or an A). At the same time, in 72 percent of the races where the incumbent Republican emerged victorious, the Democrat in the race was much weaker on the fair trade issue, receiving a B, C, D or F.

This upcoming article by John B. Judis is worth a read in The New Republic.  The title is "Debt Man Walking: Economist know the fatal flaw in our system - but they can't agree how to fix it."

For decades, the United States has relied on a tortuous financial arrangement that knits together its economy with those of China and Japan. This informal system has allowed Asian countries to run huge export surpluses with the United States, while allowing the United States to run huge budget deficits without having to raise interest rates or taxes, and to run huge trade deficits without abruptly depreciating its currency. I couldn't find a single instance of Obama discussing this issue, but it has been an obsession of bankers, international economists, and high officials like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. They think this informal system contributed to today's financial crisis. Worse, they fear that its breakdown could turn the looming downturn into something resembling the global depression of the 1930s.

By a vote of 137-122, the House Democratic Caucus voted in favor of installing Rep. Henry Waxman (CA) as chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee over long-time Chair John Dingell (MI). 

The following article appeared on the online site for Manufacturing & Technology News on November 17, 2008 and was written by Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. 

By most accounts the U.S. economy is in serious trouble. Robert Reich, an adviser to President-elect Obama, calls it a "mini-depression," but that designation might be optimistic. Russian economist Mikhail Khazin says that the "U.S. will soon face a second Great Depression." It is possible that even Khazin is optimistic.

I cannot predict the future. However, I can explain what the problems are, how they differ from past times of troubles and why traditional remedies, such as the public works programs that Reich proposes, are unlikely to succeed in reviving the U.S. economy.

The following article was written by Jack Davis, founder and owner of I Squared R Element Co., the largest U. S. manufacturer of silicon carbide heating elements in Buffalo, NY:

Even the most optimistic among us must now accept that the United States is in a recession, but if we all had good paying jobs we would not be.

We have lost 4 million manufacturing jobs since October 2002.  There are now over 10 million Americans out of work.

The following article appeared on the Economic Policy Institute website on November 19, 2008 and was written by Tony Avirgan:

The lame-duck Bush administration is trying to link support for an auto-industry rescue loan to Congressional passage of the stalled Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The loan is a good idea.(1) The Colombia trade agreement is a very bad one.

The New York Times(2) editorialized that the Colombia trade pact should be passed because doing so would benefit American companies and workers. The Times stated that Colombian assassination of trade unionists “is still too high, but has dropped sharply.” The Times is woefully misinformed. The latest report from the authoritative Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, National Union School) disputes the claim that assassinations of Colombian trade unionists are declining.(3) According to the ENS, there were 32 assassinations of unionists in 2007, and 41 assassinations of unionists in the first eight months of 2008. This is the continuation of a dismal human rights record that has seen 2,683 unionists assassinated in the past 22 years. During that time there have been few prosecutions, and those that have occurred have been only of low-level triggermen. There has been no effort to investigate and prosecute those orchestrating the crimes behind the scenes. To pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement now would give a U.S. stamp of approval to this ongoing violence and impunity.

Missouri is the last state to be called:

With all jurisdictions reporting complete but unofficial results, McCain led Obama by 3,632 votes yesterday, with more than 2.9 million cast. McCain's narrow victory breaks a bellwether streak in which Missourians had picked the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1956.

Final electoral vote tally:  Obama 365, McCain 173.  Total 538 electoral votes nationally.

Surprise, surprise.  The U.S. China  Economic and Security Review Commission released its most recent report.

The commission, consisting of six Democrats and six Republicans, says in its unanimous report that China's military modernisation and its "impressive but disturbing" space and computer warfare capabilities "suggest China is intent on expanding its sphere of control even at the expense of its Asian neighbors and the United States."

In case you forgot, China is our biggest banker and our most powerful economic and military rival.

[The report] quotes the Chinese military strategist, Wang Huacheng, as describing US dependence on space assets and information technology as its "soft ribs".