I don't think that's true. Can you provide any statistics?
It's my impression that both liberals and conservatives support some degree of protectionism/believe that free trade is bad/don't understand or agree that comparative advantage is a good thing.
But prove me wrong.
edit: i should have said "most liberals and conservatives," This would exclude the libertarians and Paul Krugmans of the world.
Think back to the presidential primary races for the 2008 election. Both parties had fully contested primaries, but
only the Democrats had a race-to-the-bottom to see who could position themselves as the most protectionist. Remember Obama, Canada, and Goolsbee?
Slate 2008
For the Canadians, a key point of concern was Obama's sharp criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement. DeMora wrote Wilson that in the Chicago meeting, Goolsbee "candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign" but reassured Rioux that Obama's NAFTA-bashing "should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans." Three weeks later, Canada's CTV News reported that a "senior member" of Obama's campaign had phoned Wilson personally to advise him to "not be worried about what Obama says about NAFTA."
The rhetoric coming from the Republican candidates during the primaries was very different.
Decades ago, it used to be that Republicans were the protectionists and Democrats the free traders. That's largely flipped. It is certainly not the case that all Dems are protectionist or that all Repubs are free trade advocates, but then it would be true to say that not all Dems support legalized abortion and not all Repubs are pro-life.
Look at what has happened to the free trade agreements to come to the Senate in the past decade.
It is mostly about unions, and secondarily about "environmental" groups that desire Rousseauian neo-feudalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/global/27trade.html
TORONTO — The Obama administration announced Saturday that it would ask Congress to ratify a long-stalled free-trade agreement with South Korea after the midterm elections in November.
Leaders at Summit Talks Turn Attention to Deficit Cuts (June 27, 2010) The decision, which risks angering labor unions and their Congressional supporters, was announced as the Group of 20 economies began a two-day summit meeting here, following a smaller meeting by the Group of 8 powers.
"labor unions and their Congressional supporters"
Hrmm, I wonder which party those labor union supporting members of Congress likely belong to?
President George W. Bush’s administration concluded the agreement in June 2007, but the Democratic leadership in Congress has not acted on it, nor has the Obama administration pressed the issue until now.
...
The South Korea free-trade agreement is one of three — the others are Colombia and Panama — that were completed under the Bush administration. Neither the Obama administration nor Congressional Democrats have moved to complete the accords.
In the case of the Latin American countries, labor groups have cited a variety of objections concerning the treatment of union workers.
That's got to be one of the most cynical arguments put forward by labor...these third world laborers are being mistreated because they are being
provided the opportunity to have a job they otherwise wouldn't have, and we clearly don't want THAT to happen.
Harry Reid wouldn't even bring those free trade agreements to the floor for a vote.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/08/21/the-democrats-and-free-trade/
If and when trade and globalization come up at the Democratic National Convention next week, I can almost guarantee that the take will be negative. It has become part of the party’s core message these days that free trade favors the rich at home and our unfair trading partners abroad. Just yesterday, in a tour of southern Virginia, Democratic hope Barak Obama took an indirect swipe at trade when he told a crowd in Martinsville, “You’re worried about the future. Here people have gone through very tough times. When you’ve got entire industries that have shipped overseas, when you’ve got thousands of jobs being lost. . . . That’s tough.”
Not all Democrats share the pessimistic view of trade. In the latest edition of the Cato Journal, hot off the presses, I review a new book by pro-trade Democrat Ed Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute. In my review of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy, I wrote:
Although it is easy to forget today as Democratic candidates rail against NAFTA and globalization, but for decades it was the Democratic Party that championed lower tariffs. Democrats opposed the high tariff wall maintained by Republicans from the Civil War to World War One, arguing that tariffs benefited big business at the expense of poor consumers. Under President Woodrow Wilson, Congress drastically lowered tariffs in 1913 and replaced the revenue with an income tax, only to see Republicans raise tariffs again in the 1920s, culminating in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 and the Great Depression that followed.
The Democrats should think long and hard before they give up that legacy altogether.
Republican protectionism decades ago was shameful, destructive, and stupid. The Democrats are fast approaching that same level of idiocy on the subject.
