This is from Kim Elliott:
If President Obama and new U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman were serious about improving working conditions in Bangladesh—and about “working to foster development through trade,” as Ambassador Froman said at his swearing in—they would do the opposite of what they are doing. They would offer to increase the paltry trade benefits that Bangladesh receives, contingent on serious and sustainable improvements in worker rights.
The administration could do this by signing on to an initiative to provide duty-free, quota-free market access for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), including Bangladesh, that all the other industrialized nations long ago embraced. But that would require taking on the U.S. textile industry—and symbolic gestures are far more appealing than messy political fights.
