Witness the turmoil and strife in Washington last week, when Senate Democrats tried to tie irrelevant provisions about labor unions, environmental rules, and currency values to a “fast track” bill (not that there’s anything fast in Congress).
 
The bill would give President Barack Obama authority to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade-liberalization agreement, and submit it to Congress for a single up-or-down vote.
 
This fast-track negotiating authority arose in the Kennedy administration as a way to limit parochial lawmakers’ ability to attach killer amendments to trade deals. Eventually, the most ambitious meddlers caught on: If they couldn’t amend trade deals, they could kill them by refusing fast-track authority.
 
Last week, the Senate voted twice on whether to start debating a bill providing fast-track authority to complete negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
 
Supporters needed 60 votes in the Senate, but 51 Republicans and one Democrat voted in favor in the first vote. Casting votes in opposition were 44 Democrats and one Republican. This vote was an amazing defeat for the Democratic president and for economic liberty. It was also a temporary defeat.
 
Fortunately, the president decided to get into the game and play rough—at least by the standards that prevail in Washington, where hot air is a deadly weapon. He targeted 10 Democrats, led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who were heralding their devotion to free trade, while making the bill impossible to pass. He put public pressure on them in a White House meeting and demanded that they stand up for free trade.
 
The gang of 10 had folded under pressure from Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a strong protectionist. They folded again when the president pushed back.
 
After Reid lost control of the trade issue, the Senate voted again. This time, 14 Democrats accepted the face-saving promise of votes on their amendments as separate bills instead of a guarantee that the amendments would be incorporated in the main bill. This drastically reduced the chance that any of them will be enacted.
 
The U.S. has been leading the world toward international business liberty since World War II, tiny step by tiny step. Although the practical effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are often overrated, derailing it would be a step in the wrong direction, with powerful symbolic effect. It would give satisfaction and inspiration to Americans who would rather live in the mythical economic security of Fortress America.
 
Organized labor has been trying to wreck trade liberalization since the early 1970s, when U.S. manufacturing first began to rust away. It was no coincidence that the most heavily unionized industries faded first.
 
It’s futile to expect a union boss to acknowledge that productivity and profit—not unions—create jobs and raise wages. But citizen-consumers shouldn’t buy into a narrow self-interest that can only claim to represent a small percentage of the workforce. They should be free to buy what they want, wherever it comes from.
 
Some people in the U.S. environmental movement are playing the same kind of con game. They want trading partners to adopt U.S. levels of conservation, pollution control, green subsidies, and regulatory power. They may be somewhat more idealistic than the union cynics, but achieving their good intentions also requires our trading partners to earn new wealth first.
 
Free trade for all Americans, to have liberty to do business and buy products as they can around the world, is so important that it should not have the help of the government.
 
The best trade policy is no trade policy: no tariffs, no quotas, no trade barriers at all.
 
We don’t need lawmakers, bureaucrats, or trade lobbyists to assure commercial freedom for U.S. businesses. Let’s just do it.