Here’s Part II of many. I last left off in the middle of his list of issues under the heading “Standing Up For Regular Families”. Next up, Trade.

Trade: According to Edwards, “our trade policy has been bad for working Americans.” Oh no, I feel the slow, cold creep of American isolationism creeping in. After outlining some problems with our economy and subtly implying that free trade is the cause, he describes the goals of his ‘smart trade’ policies. He wants to help workers and corporations by changing NAFTA and the WTO, building a global middle class (which is exactly what free trade is accomplishing), strengthening unions, and implementing his other economic policies mentioned under other issues.

Edwards would like trade agreements to be ‘regular’ family-oriented. He believes that the considerations of trade agreements should not be corporations or investors, but things like the agreements impact on jobs, wages, and prices. He fails to mention which of these are most important. For instance, off shoring our manufacturing base has resulted in loss of jobs and lower wages in that sector while greatly reducing prices. He talks about wage stagnation, but not the purchasing power difference in the dollar. I’d be curious to see those numbers as well.

Edwards wants to include labor protections, environmental standards, and currency manipulation restrictions in every trade deal. While this sounds great, what is often overlooked is that such requirements would preclude most, if not all, developing nations will be unable to enter into the agreement. This would result in higher prices for us and continued very low wages for the developing nations. The better plan is to insist on these requirements incrementally as the nation is able to meet them.

Working Families: This section is a rehash of elements of other issues John Edwards addresses. See his stance on poverty, tax reform/simplification, and trade.

Predatory Mortgages: This too was addressed in a previous issue. However, this one goes into more details. Edwards proposes regulating all lenders, not just banks, strengthen underwriting standards, and ban broker kickbacks. This would effectively end the practice of brokers creating excessive risk loans and then selling them off to third parties. He also wants to change bankruptcy laws to make it easier for filers to keep their homes. The last two goals he mentions is creating a fund for local non-profit agencies that provide foreclosure relief and urging the FDIC to mitigate foreclosures.

Debt and Savings: At the heart of Edwards’ Debt and Savings plan is to eliminate the Office of Thrift Supervision and replace it with a new Family Savings and Credit Commission. The aim of this commission is to protect consumers with regards to all financial services and products marketed to families. Are you SOL if you choose to remain single? “Family” seems to be a big political buzz word this cycle. Anyway, this commission would ensure that all terms are reasonable and fairly disclosed.

Legislatively, he plans to introduce the Borrower’s Security Act. The law would require credit card issuers to do four things.

1. Disclose the ‘true’ cost of paying only the minimum
2. Restore the 10 day grace period for late payments
3. Apply interest rates to future balances only
4. End the practice of universal default

He goes on to reiterate his plans for ending predatory lending.

One new idea in this issue is the idea of creating alternatives to abusive lending. In the past, financial institutions used to make small personal loans. Once more profitable credit cards caught on, personal loans all but disappeared. Edwards wants to provide assistance to non-profits who offer low-interest, emergency loans. I would like to see this happen and taken a step further. Micro lending has worked in other countries to alleviate poverty, why not here?

Food Safety: You know how on just about every product you buy, you can find a “Made in” label? Edwards wants the same labeling for food. That sounds good to me. It would enable me to be a more conscientious consumer. I’ll have a better idea of how much fossil fuel was spent in getting that particular food item to me. I wonder how this labeling would apply to foods made from multiple sources in multiple countries. He’d like to integrate the fifteen different agencies that currently regulate our food supply. This would increase consistency and reduce bureaucracy. This combined agency would have the power of issuing mandatory recalls. Lastly, he wants increased inspection rate of imported food and to require “countries exporting food to the U.S. to have safety systems certified by the FDA as equivalent to our own.”

Also under this issue, Edwards takes firm aim at agribusiness. The two big boys, ADM and Cargill have already been found guilty of price fixing in the past, but still practice anti-competitive activities. Edwards wants an end to that. He’d also limit farm subsidies to $250k per year per person to cut off corporate welfare in this industry. Any enforcement of antitrust law will be seen as favorable by me.

That ends the first category of issues listed on John Edwards’ website. It seems a fitting place to finish Part II. In Part III, I will start looking at the issues under the second of three categories entitled “Restoring America’s Leadership Role In The World”. It looks like it will be foreign policy time!