SO IT’S NOW A CERTAINTY—if the Democrat’s win the U.S. Presidential Election this coming November, it would be the downside for global economy as both Democratic Party nominee aspirants have voiced out their disillusionment with free trade. Some months ago, Barack Obama had to apologize publicly for announcing his intention of cutting back down or tightening trade stipulations in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) America it has with Canada, and thereon with it’s southern neighbor Mexico. While I thought that Mr. Obama was merely alone in this precept, I found out lately, while updating myself with the latest developments in the presidential race over there, that Ms. Hillary Clinton holds the same sentiment.

This becomes now a vital issue not merely in the coming polls in America, but subsequently throughout the four corners of the world, that if the Democrat’s win in November, the global thrust of freeing trade from tariff restrictions and other economic barriers would be broughgt back a great number of years, parlaying the substantial gains it had in the Doha Round.

Not that we could entirely blame Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton for their perspectives on free trade for America have been losing jobs and economic advantage over the recent years in very dramatic fashion, where every major American multinational have locations in China or elsewhere in Asia. And if the this trend goes on and on unabated, the U.S. economy would surely go towards a steep downward spiral, when in fact as of the present, a dragging slowdown is biting the economy over there like a giant leech that couldn’t be taken out even through the smartest financial surgery.

But are they doing the right thing?

It couldn’t be helped to assume that both Obama and Clinton is merely taking advantage of the gaining disillusionment of the Americans over the negative results of intense globalization and loosening of trade barriers to their country, losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands as every major American products is now either manufactured or assembled in China or Vietnam. And if they pander on this sentiments, their party would surely amassed most of the votes this coming November in a huge way, and along with the Americans well-rooted dissuasion with the Iraq War that President George W. Bush had started, one could say that the Democratic presidential nominee—either Obama or Clinton—has a monkey-wrench hold of the presidential victory later this year.

I have a feeling that despite the seemingly reasonable concerns of both Obama and Clinton on free trade, America may not really be able to untangle itself from the overly mature growth of liberalization of trade all over the world, where every nation today have already committed themselves towards free trade and free flow of goods and labor in the coming years or decades. At this point, not even America could hold it back or reverse the flood of global intention to make trade free and fair among every trading nation all over the world. It’s like perhaps Al Gore’s well-publicized intention to bring America towards the Kyoto Protocol and agreement to steep industrial gas reduction where for example that he had won the presidential election years ago and once he was already in the top position, he wouldn’t still be able to carry this intention anyway—at least not wholly as he had intended it—for such action would greatly bring damage to the American economy to the extent that a radical reduction in industrial fumes would mean stifling and paralyzing the U.S. economy. He wouldn’t have done it in the end.

And so as with the nascent Democrat’s battlecry of pulling America away from free trade and towards economic isolationism because the moment it disengages itself from the ever-persistent call for global trade liberalization, there might be disastrous economic impact on America where China becomes continually and slowly indestructible as an alternative trading partner, along with the European Union and countries in South America as well as ASEAN where the Philippines is a member. What America should better do in the process is not to dispel free trade entirely but find ways instead on how to buffer or adjust to an entirely new environment that global free trade connotes, like for example re-examining high labor cost in America and uncompetitive pricing of American manufacture.

America has to go with the flow of trade liberalization or be left behind. You might think that this could be the most incredible thing to happen to the biggest nation in the world, but you know, it could happen.