ABSTRACT
The U.S. is a laggard in international labor rights, but it once was a leader. The New Deal began to build a social liberal international economy based on its domestic labor and social policies. This chapter recaptures the Global New Deal vision and shows how Roosevelt and Truman exercised institutional and policy leadership to carry it out. Both sides of the domestic-international interface were simultaneously in play because the New Deal was committed to an expansive domestic policy that could be secured by flexible international monetary, labor, and trade policies. Rather than globalization as such, it was the leverage of domestic opponents of the New Deal's labor policy who curtailed the liberal Democrats’ international labor rights policy during the postwar era. The U.S. “had it both ways” by promoting rights abroad but not implementing these standards at home. Later, in the 1970s, when major changes were made in monetary and trade policies, U.S. leadership was simplified to Cold War posturing and to individual rights rather than labor rights. Ever since, both Democrats and Republicans give lip service to international labor rights, but the same anti-union domestic groups block the implementation of these rights in the U.S.
