Back on my particular hobby horse today on the idiotic description of the issues around trade. And, as usual, The New York Times is the reason. Robin toner has a piece today entitled “For Democrats, New Challenge in Age-Old Rift.” The article is kind of a profile of Rep. Sander Levin, who chairs the subcommittee on trade of the Ways and Means Committee. Here is where the stupidity begins:

Mr. Levin is one of the newly empowered Democratic leaders trying to find a trade policy that can unite their party and heal a painful rift between those who see a globalized economy as inevitable and good and those who see the cost under current policies, in lost jobs and unsettled lives, as simply too great.

    The dichotomy between those who see globalization as inevitable versus everyone else obscures the problem. The real issue is: what are the rules? We’ve always had a global economy–yes, it’s functioned at a different level. The fact that goods and services may move more quickly does not change the point that people have always trades between each others.

    IT’S THE RULES THAT GOVERN THAT TRADE. Sorry for shouting.

    Further along in the story there is a paraphrase of Levin’s position that gets to the point:

Mr. Levin, a man whose natural demeanor appears to be one of grave concern, is at the center of these complicated currents. Like many other Democrats, he argues that the old terms of the trade debate no longer apply, that it is a false choice to set up a clash between free trade and protectionism, internationalism and isolationism. Trade cannot be stopped, he says, but it cannot simply be left to the vagaries of a free market.

    Aha!