This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 20th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the year since taking office, President Obama's trade agenda has been decidedly more punitive

and protectionist than previous administrations,

including Democratic ones.

Cato's Dan Eichenson is author of a new Cato Trade Policy Analysis made on Earth how

global economic integration renders trade policy obsolete.

Over the last several decades the world has changed considerably.

That period has been characterized by barrier erosion.

Political barriers, the fall of the wall, the opening of China to the west.

Economic barriers have come down in the form of trade agreements. Physical barriers have been overcome. We now

have container shipping. We have had revolutions and communications. There has been what has been

characterized as the death of distance and that has really led to tremendous

growth globally over the past several decades. We see a proliferation of cross-border investment

and transnational production and supply chains that really speak to the need to update our policies and our ideas about how the world actually works.

The factory floor is no longer contained within four walls and one roof. It's no longer our producers against their

producers or us against them. However, our trade policy seems to reflect that

anachronistic view. I mean, it's never really been the case that it's

us against them, but it's less so the case now. So we really need to update our assumptions and you know right now

policy conflates producer interests with some view of the national interest, some conception of the

national interest.

But in fact, you know, our economy is producers, importers, retailers, accountants, financiers, scientists, and when you go to bat for producers,

...