Sanctions against China for prison labor or their communist system is a political decision entailing issues beyond the economic benefits of free trade. It says nothing of free trade in itself. Try again.
...But Landrieu also took other lessons from the Republican victories on Nov. 5. Chief among them was the importance of devising some message, strategy or issue that would offset the president's formidable personal popularity with a local issue that played to the Democrats' advantage. In Landrieu's case, the issue was sugar. The day after Bush's campaign visit to the state last Tuesday, Landrieu's campaign began airing an ad charging that the White House had struck a "secret deal" to double Mexican sugar imports to the United States. The imports would hurt Louisiana's 27,000 sugar farmers and the state's $1.7 billion sugar industry.
The ad hung on a slender thread of evidence: a single, unsourced article in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. The White House denied the existence of any such "deal" to flood the United States with cheap Mexican sugar. Nonetheless, the point seemed to hit home, dovetailing with Landrieu's message that she would put "Louisiana first" while Terrell -- by now appearing in television ads side by side with the president -- would be a rubber stamp for the administration who would disregard the state's interests.
Must have been all those black sugar farmers Landrieu was appealing to, cause we know that in the 'heart' of the confederacy that the conservative white farmers are all free-traders, right?