Not only would successful completion of the Doha round bring great benefit to the US, it would be the single best thing Obama could do for international development. The assembled economic superstars of the Copenhagen Consensus found that it would bring $17 billion worth of benefits to developing countries by 2015. However, because the benefits get bigger as those countries develop, projecting them out to the end of the century results in trillions of dollars of benefits, which will translate into such things as increased resiliency to extreme weather events, which means much less damage from global warming (if it happens). A joined-up thinker would make trade his #1 anti-global-warming strategy, if nothing else. Instead, we have a strategy aimed at making people worldwide poorer by raising energy costs.

I wonder which approach Mr. Gerson would call compassionate, by the way . . .