Brown wants to tighten trade security

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060320/NEWS09/603200317/-1/NEWS

Article published Monday, March 20, 2006

U.S. Senate candidate pitches platform in Toledo

By JIM TANKERSLEY
BLADE POLITICS WRITER


The camera was rolling; the question, Iraq. Sherrod Brown was reciting the Democratic homeland security playbook until, suddenly, he jumped to a topic it's safe to bet no U.S. Senate candidate has touched in America this year: upcoming trade negotiations with Malaysia.

"No more trade deals until we have a national security review," Mr. Brown told the television reporter during a stop in Toledo yesterday.

Later, he told another reporter "you open up markets, you open up ports."

Mr. Brown is a congressman from suburban Cleveland, the presumptive Democratic nominee this fall against U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine (R., Ohio), and, analysts say, the first Senate candidate post-9/11 to pitch voters on the notion that free trade threatens national security...

International trade, Mr. Brown has told reporters and crowds across Ohio in recent weeks, gives terrorists a potential path into America's ports, railroads, and highways. He introduced legislation this month to require a security review of any country that wants to negotiate freer trade with the United States - such as Malaysia, which Mr. Brown says has supported terrorist activity.
Mr. Brown has long fought trade agreements on social and economic grounds. His security argument looks to build on public outcry over a now-scuttled Bush Administration plan to allow a company based in the Middle East to operate some U.S. ports.