No issue has divided Democrats more this election year than trade. Passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is one of President Barack Obama’s last remaining legacy goals. Yet, it is opposed by most other Democrats—including Hillary Clinton.

I am a lifelong Democrat. The Pew Center’s online political typology poll grades me a “Solid Liberal,” and Facebook’s look at my Internet habits goes further: “Very Liberal.” Over the years I have been fortunate to be an aide to Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and John Kerry.

So I’m a card-carrying liberal Democrat—and I’m also resolutely pro-trade. To supporters of Bernie Sanders, this may look like a contradiction. But the truth is the opposite: I am pro-trade precisely because I am a liberal. However, I also understand that trade has winners and losers. To that end, policymakers have a responsibility to help those harmed by free trade, a mission that we have too often failed in the past—but one that we can accomplish in the future.

My support for free trade rests on three decidedly liberal principles. The first is that as the wealthiest country in the world, we have an obligation to help the poorest around the world.

I grew up in Latin America and saw first-hand the desperate circumstances of too many of the locals. I played with the children from the mud hovels in the arroyo across the street from our home. I toured the factories built by American businessmen like my father, with their bright clean assembly line halls filled with hundreds of previously destitute workers proudly wearing their company smocks. As an American, I was proud of the economic development that U.S. investment had brought to these communities.

Most of my fellow progressives share my sense of obligation to fight global poverty. They applaud USAID and the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. Through civic organizations and churches they happily contribute to missions to Africa or Latin America or Asia and join in the important work of building schools and roads and ensuring all humans have access to clean water. And if these poor arrive on U.S. shores, my fellow progressives welcome them and strive to secure them health care, an education, and a path to economic security and citizenship, even if they compete with U.S. workers.

Yet government aid and charitable works have done far less to improve living conditions around the world than trade and investment. It is precisely those gleaming factories and global commerce that have helped the global poor the most. Why, then, do so many liberals oppose using the vast resources of American business to help poor communities overseas build good factories and businesses so they can make a good life at home—but will spend tax dollars to the same end?

A second reason I am pro-trade is because of my years in foreign policy, in the Clinton White House and after. I have seen how our hard power—our military might—works best when leveraged by diplomacy and economic power. Like most progressives, I believe that while the world is a dangerous place, guns alone (aircraft carrier deployments, forward basing, mutual defense treaties) are tools that are extremely expensive and exceedingly blunt. Like most progressives, I believe the most effective foreign policy will supplement military force with robust diplomacy and engagement.

That includes the much-maligned Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP was carefully conceived as an economic framework to bind us to our allies around the Pacific Rim by deepening trade and commercial ties. It excluded other nations with sub-par labor and commercial standards (like China) while at the same time enticing them to raise their standards so they might someday join and enjoy TPP’s economic benefits. TPP is a textbook example of U.S. leadership and engagement that would allow us to exert influence in Asia while keeping our guns holstered, our ships moored and our soldiers home—until absolutely needed. All progressive goals.

Yet many progressives still deride TPP. I’ll be the first to admit that TPP, like all trade deals, is not perfect. U.S. officials spent years negotiating complicated chapters on labor rights, environmental rules and much more. We were never going to get everything we wanted.

Despite its imperfections, TPP remains critical to our foreign policy goals. Without it, what will our Asia-Pacific policy be? What other tool will bind us to Australia and Chile and New Zealand, lift labor and environmental standards in Vietnam and Malaysia, pry open closed markets in Japan, and deprive China of the power to set global commercial and trading standards? These benefits may not appear obvious on the surface, but they are essential to our national security—and cannot be accomplished by guns alone.

Last but not least, I am pro-trade because I share the progressive desire to reduce income inequality in the United States. Achieving that goal won’t happen by closing ourselves off from the world. To reduce income inequality, we must grow our economy, and I simply see no way to grow our economy without harnessing trade with the rest of the world.

We are the world’s largest economy and command 22 percent of world GDP. But that means that 78 percent of the world’s economy is beyond our borders, as are 95 percent of the world’s people. We must access those consumers and markets to grow. Without trade agreements to force open closed markets abroad and to encourage nations to raise their labor and environmental standards, and to force low foreign tariffs to make our goods competitive with locally manufactured goods, how can America prosper in the 21st century? With just 5 percent of the world’s population, we can’t do it by buying and selling only to ourselves.

My own progressive vision, like Obama’s, relies on well-crafted trade agreements. But like Hillary Clinton, I believe we must do more to help workers and communities left behind by globalization’s bloodless workings. Too many factories have closed and too many communities have been devastated. What can we do better? First, Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) (which Democrats have supported and most Republicans have resisted) should be greatly enhanced and greatly expanded. TAA should have more funds to retrain more workers. Communities devastated by plant closings should receive coordinated federal aid to meet the needs of their weakened institutions and infrastructure. And we need to establish a meaningful wage insurance program to help families sidelined by globalization meet the abrupt shortfall in their incomes. Such insurance would fill at least some of the gap left by new jobs that don’t pay as well as the old jobs right away. As with unemployment insurance, these benefits could be paid for by broad-based small contributions.

That is my progressive solution to the problems with free trade—not to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world but to maintain the benefits of trade agreements while protecting those few Americans from carrying most of the burden.

In my daily work, I advise a broad array of corporations, nonprofits and universities. Many of my clients favor enhanced trade because they believe it will be good for their business or mission. And that may be so—but my reasons for supporting trade spring instead from my committed progressive values. I am a liberal Democrat and pro-trade. I see no contradiction.

Nelson W. Cunningham was a special adviser in the Clinton White House and heads McLarty Associates, an international consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that assists companies and nonprofits in global commerce.

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