Talk about starting off on the wrong foot!

The nation is struggling to deal with an economic crisis stemming ultimately from under-producing and over-borrowing.  Who does President-elect Obama pick as his White House Chief of Staff (and thus closest advisor)?  Answer: House Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Representative whose resume includes spearheading the Clinton administration’s pork barrel-dominated lobbying campaign to secure Congressional passage of NAFTA – the blueprint for outsourcing-focused trade deals that have ravaged the nation’s productive base.

Although Emanuel has admitted that NAFTA “hasn’t lived up to its hopes,” he has apparently learned little else about the economy in the decade-and-a-half since.  He’s evidently happy enough to mouth the liberal Democratic mantra about putting “tough labor and environmental standards” in trade agreements, but seems clueless about a much bigger problem with recent American trade policies – their tight focus on low-income third world countries of value mainly as export platforms for multinational companies, not as final consumers of U.S.-made goods

Emanuel has written about “tough-as-nails enforcement” of trade agreement terms to “keep our competitors honest.” Yet he and his House leadership colleagues have stonewalled efforts to pass an effective bill to combat currency manipulation – one of the most damaging forms of foreign trade cheating.

And like so many other Clinton-istas, he evidently believes that there’s nothing wrong with the nation’s basic approach to trade policy that can’t be fixed with a few crocodile tears about lost jobs and some crumbs of welfare for displaced workers.

Of course, Obama has taken many of these positions, too.  But he has also recognized the trade policy blunders of the Clinton years.  And he has supported the Ryan-Hunter/Stabenow-Bunning-Bayh bills – the only currency manipulation legislation before Congress with any real teeth.  Is the Emanuel pick more evidence of his longstanding trade policy ambivalence?  If so, a cratering economy won't give him that political luxury.    

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