Good article – How the Democrats handed Trump the working class

Off Marketwatch.com (a business website & mostly Hillary supporter). Globalization and the loss of jobs in America.

The story of Trump’s amazingly successful movement is also the story of how Democrats turned their backs on their working-class roots and sided with the elites on the crucial economic question of our times: Who would win from globalization, and who would lose?

The facts are stark. Since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect and the U.S. began the process of lowering tariffs on Chinese imports, the U.S. trade deficit has ballooned from about $100 billion to about $500 billion a year. Since then, U.S. manufacturing jobs have fallen by about 5 million, and inequality has worsened, with the richest Americans capturing almost all of the income growth.

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Democrats will have only themselves to blame if Trump waltzes into the White House leading a populist movement that could have been — should have been — led by a Democrat. Although rank-and-file Democrats were practically the only ones talking about the unacceptable costs of globalization over the past 25 years, the elite leaders of the party — especially presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — did little to make globalization work for working Americans.