Richard D. Wolff

Right now the whole European establishment is in outright PANIC, because a little region in Belgium called Wallonia blocks CETA. The neoliberal ideologues double down on free trade and that this is the only way to produce wealth (as if production and industrial policies play no role). This is very important because in a world with countries highly dependent on exports or imports (i.e. imbalances in trade) more free trade is very procyclical. Although this is not the point most critiques of CETA are critical of (not even Wallonia), it should be pointed out to the public why it is important to have institutions and rules to balance nominal exports and imports and that the complete absence of even a debate about such mechanisms in free trade agreements currently negotiated (including TTIP) is the actual scandal (which doesn't diminish all the other scandals of those agreements).