His latest column, entitled
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html">"Where sweatshops are a dream", argues that we
shouldn't attach labor standards to trade agreements because the capitalists who like to set up shop in the least-regulated, lowest wage countries might then move their factories to other, slightly better-off unregulated, low-wage countries.
Kristof's 'either-or' argument? It's better to be exploited by a sweatshop, making pennies a day in unsafe conditions, than it is to be sifting through a pile of refuse. The enemy, according to Kristof, are the anti-sweatshop activists and Obama's proposed policies.
So those are the only two choices Kristof can think of? A sweatshop or no sweatshop? Isn't that the classic manifesto that anti-union "free market" jerks have always used - you either accept your job the way it is - low wages, little safety, etc. - or we'll move someplace else and you won't have a job?
Has this latte liberal ever heard of the concept that rather than the vast majority run against one another to the bottom, maybe, just maybe, CEOs and top management should take a pay cut?