Welcome. Today is Wednesday, November 29th, and this is the Cato Institute's daily

podcast. I'm Anastasia Yuglova. At a speech yesterday, U.S. Trade Representative

Susan Schwab sounded optimistic about the prospects for bipartisan cooperation in 110th Congress, calling

the moment an opportunity to make bipartisan history in trade.

Today our Trade Policy analyst Sally James offers her thoughts on a state of trade after the Democratic election victories.

With the recent election victories of some very vocal opponents of free trade, would you say that prospects for further liberalization are in peril?

Well, it's difficult to say because the mood in Congress, this strongly bipartisan support for trade liberalization that we'd seen

certainly over the post war period seem to have been breaking down and not just because of

the Democrats concerns about labor and environmental regulations but some Republican members were not as strongly

supportive as trade as they may been previously, and certainly not all Republican members are

pro-free trade.

But what we have seen, and University in Switzerland, the University of St. Gallen,

had done a study and had concluded that 16 House seats and five Senate seats had actually changed hands from pro-trade reform or pro-tradyabilization

members to, I guess, trade sceptics.

You could describe them as at best, some of them were overtly hostile to trade.

And that really shows that there's been somewhat a shift.

I guess the center of gravity has shifted.

So certainly I would not, example say that fast-track

authority which is the authority for the administration just to submit a

trade agreement to Congress for an up and down vote. In other words they can't make amendments and pick it apart.

I was not confident that that was going to be passed no matter who controlled Congress in July 2007 when it was up for renewal but certainly I think we've seen that the

center of gravity has shifted in a more I guess protection or store or

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