David Sirota

We just heard from Terry McGraw, the head of McGraw-Hill and chairman of the Business Roundtable - the same Business Roundtable that is lobbying aggressively to prevent shareholders from having a say on how much the companies they own spend on CEO pay packages. That makes sense, at least for someone like McGraw - he made a cool $20 million last year as his company continues to use the provisions it lobbied for in the No Child Left Behind Act to bilk states across the country.

McGraw’s speech was truly incredible, in that I really can’t believe he could deliver it without breaking into laughter or at least twitching. The kinds of propaganda he spewed is reserved for Saturday Night Live spoofs or pathological liars. For instance, much of is talk was about “free” trade and its supposed benefits to ordinary Americans. He actually said that “free trade has had a net positive impact on U.S. manufacturing jobs” and specifically chastised the Montana Senate for (with the help of the Progressive States Network) passing a resolution demanding Congress reject President Bush’s request to reauthorize “fast track” trade authority. Apparently, the fact that America has lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since the signing of NAFTA, China-PNTR and other “free” trade deals is a “net positive.”

McGraw attacked those pushing for basic labor, human rights and environmental protections in trade pacts as “protectionists” and “isolationists” and then, incredibly, said “We need to stop demonizing each other in the trade debate.” Topping it all off, he claimed that in Washington, “the voice of business is very, very low.”

When it came time for questions, I asked McGraw a simple one: As a critic of “protections” in trade deals, does he oppose the intellectual property protections in trade deals that his company lobbies for, and on the flip side, if he supports such “protections” does he support similar protections for labor, human rights and the environment? He seemed utterly stunned, and stuttered through a truly incoherent 3 minute answer that telegraphed to the entire audience that he didn’t want to deal with the question. The only thing I could really get from his answer was his one line saying that “some people want to use trade policy as foreign policy.” He then ignored his own request for “civility in the trade debate” and again attacked those who demand such protections for basic human needs as a contingent of trade agreements as advocating for “isolationism.”

After the speech, a bunch of folks came up to me telling me they were glad I asked the question, but that I should have expected McGraw to give a non-answer. I guess I should have, but somewhere deep down, I always hope that those I disagree with have real principles behind their positions and that such principles will come out when they are asked a straightforward question. However, when talking about basic kitchen table economic issues like trade, my naive hope that “free” traders can defend themselves on the merits is usually shown to be just that: naive.

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Making the Chairman of the Business Roundtable Into a Babbling Ball of Incoherence