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On the Resignation of Gary Cohn

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

It is very telling that for Cohn, a Democrat, the final straw in leaving was not Trump’s horrifying response to the Charlottesville white supremacist uber-hate fest or endless attacks on Mexicans and Muslims, but a steel trade enforcement action involving tariffs that would be 5 percent lower than the steel trade action enacted by President George W. Bush in 2002.

That Cohn is a Democrat did not stop him from joining the Trump administration, but that his departure would be spurred over a trade policy dispute reveals that his years on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs apparently made his one unbending principle the defense of the corporate-managed trade policies that have outsourced millions of middle-class jobs and pushed down Americans wages.

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