Even The Wall Street Journal acknowledges the obvious today:

President Bush’s ambitious global trade agenda appears to be shrinking to this: a new investment-treaty negotiation with Rwanda, launched Thursday, likely to be followed by pursuit of similar pacts with the small African countries of Ghana and Mauritius.

Bigger, more complex agreements — notably the Doha Round for multilateral liberalization — are about to become significantly more difficult for the White House to advance. That is because Mr. Bush’s special authority for negotiating major trade deals expires at the end of this month, with no prospect in sight that Congress will renew it any time soon.

But, not surprisingly, the paper continues to hold on to a language and definition framework that see the trade debate through the eyes of so-called “free trade” and corporate-speak. Check the following out.

“The overall signal is: Once again, we can’t get ourselves together…and we’re turning in on ourselves,” says Susan Sechler, director of trade and development for the German Marshall Fund, a trans-Atlantic think tank. Ms. Sechler says fast-track’s expiration underscores U.S. unease about globalization and reinforces doubts abroad about the U.S.’s continued economic engagement abroad. “Those are terrible messages to be sending,” she says.

And…

Mr. Bush can’t expect any real help on fast-track from Capitol Hill. The White House has vowed to ensure that Democratic priorities, such as labor rights, are better reflected in trade policy. But skepticism runs deep. Antiglobalization sentiments helped propel Democrats to power in the House and Senate in the 2006 election. Even with deals negotiated under the fast-track umbrella, pacts with Colombia and South Korea face particularly difficult paths to passage.

Note the framework. People opposed to current so-called “free trade” are “anti-globalization” who want to “turn in on ourselves.” Reporters are so locked into the idea of so-called “free trade” that they can’t see that this is just a question of what the rules should be in the global economy. Indeed, the one thing that you can say about most of the people who oppose so-called “free trade” is that they are hardly “turning in” on themselves–thanks to so-called “free trade”, a broad network of alliances and connections has expanded and grown across the globe.