On Resignation of Gary Cohn
By Lori Wallach
Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
It is very telling that for Cohn, a Democrat, the final straw in leaving was not Trump’s horrifying response to the Charlottesville white supremacist uber-hate fest or endless attacks on Mexicans and Muslim, but a steel trade enforcement action involving tariffs that would be 5 percent lower than the steel trade action enacted by Pres. George W. Bush in 2002.
That Cohn is a Democrat did not stop him from joining the Trump administration, but that his departure would be spurred over a trade policy dispute reveals that his years on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs apparently made his one unbending principle the defense of the corporate-managed trade policies that have outsourced millions of middle class jobs and pushed down Americans wages.
***
