Barack Obama's decision to nominate former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to serve as the next U.S. Trade Representative is deeply unsettling for those who hoped the president-elect would chart a new course with regard to trade policy.

Kirk's record is that of a free-trade absolutist who has embraced and defended the discredited positions of President Bush and former President Bill Clinton even as Americans have signaled their desire for policies that protect the interests of workers, farmers, communities and the environment in the U.S. and abroad.

The feckless Commodity Futures Trading Commission took a closer-than-usual look at a private Swiss energy conglomerate and found that the firm, Vitol, held oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than to line up the actual delivery of fuel. At one point in July, Vitol held 11 percent of all the oil contracts on the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange, according to a report published Thursday by The Washington Post. "It confirms to me that you have huge companies speculating," Senator Bernie Sanders said. Some economists say speculators, not supply-and-demand forces, have driven up crude oil prices by 25 percent to 50 percent. Sanders said he was glad the commission finally got its act together. "If you had an administration concerned about protecting consumers rather than big speculators this is something that would have been investigated years ago," he said.

In Iraq, the war dragged into its sixth year as the top U.S. general came to Capitol Hill to advocate holding troop levels steady. Senator Bernie Sanders called the war "a disaster." On the home front, the economy was dragged down by the hemorrhaging housing market. The Senate passed a bill designed to help stabilize the situation. Sanders-backed provisions to help disabled veterans and to promote energy efficiency were part of the package. Amid troubling signs that home foreclosures were on the rise in Vermont, hundreds of people emailed the senator to tell personal stories about how they are coping. Sanders took to the Senate floor to read some of the poignant stories that personalized what he called the collapse of the American middle class.

(Host) President Bush is forcing Congress to vote on a free trade agreement with Colombia.  Freshman Senators like Vermont's Bernie Sanders are spearheading opposition to the deal.

In the sixth year of the war in Iraq, U.S. planes at week's end bombed insurgent targets in the southern port city of Basra. Iraqis, acting alone, began their attempted show of strength on Wednesday in what had been billed by President Bush as an important test of whether the government and military could succeed on their own. In the more critical war on global warming, Al Gore, interviewed for Sunday's 60 Minutes, likened those who deny climate change to people who clung to a belief that the earth was flat. In South Royalton, Vt., Sanders told a Vermont Law School symposium that meeting the challenge of climate change merits a commitment like the program that put men on the moon. And from Copenhagen to Burlington, the ambassador to the United States from Finland accepted the senator's invitation to a town meeting in City Hall on Monday.

General Motors car engines were once the stuff of American legend. The Beach Boys sang, "nothing can touch my 409," about a powerful Chevy V-8. Oldsmobile owners in 1981 were so angered that their cars had been fitted with Chevrolet engines instead of Oldsmobile "Rockets," the subject of another hit song, that they successfully sued GM over the swap.

"Sen. Bernie Sanders believes the country is ready to join his fight to overhaul American trade policy," the Chicago Tribune reported this week. The front-page article called Sanders "a leader in the growing group of lawmakers who blame expanded trade for lost manufacturing jobs and stagnant wages for American workers."

Sen. Bernie Sanders believes the country is ready to join his fight to overhaul American trade policy. He wants to believe Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are too.

Sanders, a liberal Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, is a leader in the growing group of lawmakers who blame expanded trade for lost manufacturing jobs and stagnant wages for American workers. The campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination would appear to promise them a crowning achievement: Both Obama and Clinton say they'll renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and push for a more worker-friendly trade model if elected.

Senator Bernie Sanders has joined seven first-term Democrats in a push for actions against China.

They say Chinese trade policies are unfair and need to be corrected. Todd Zwillich reports.

Labor and consumer groups, as well as some domestic manufacturers hurt by Chinese imports, are ratcheting up pressure on Democratic leaders to move legislation dealing with what they characterize as China's unfair trade practices.

While the presidential campaign grabbed headlines, there is a great deal of work left to do in Washington when Congress returns later this month. As the economy entered what some already are calling a recession, President Bush took off his rose-colored glasses for a moment to acknowledge "economic challenges." Senator Sanders wrote this week about a need for Senate leaders to aggressively stand up to Bush and fight obstruction tactics employed at almost every turn by his allies on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, Senator Sanders went to Africa to look into the exploitation of child labor on cocoa plantations. And the one-year anniversary of the "surge" in Iraq passed with still no plan to bring home our troops.

U.S. Senators Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders and Congressman Elliot Engel are in Ivory Coast's capital, Abidjan, for a two-day visit related to child labor in cocoa production. They are set to meet with the government, industry representatives, aid organizations, and cocoa-producing families in Ivory Coast, before heading to Ghana. Naomi Schwarz has this from VOA's regional bureau in Dakar.

Senator Bernie Sanders made the following statement on a United State-Peru trade agreement the Senate approved today:

"What the overwhelming majority of the American people understand is that our trade policy has been a complete failure, it has been bad for the U.S. economy, and it has caused the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs.

The Senate gave overwhelming final approval Tuesday to a trade agreement with Peru, as most Democrats joined nearly all Republicans in handing President Bush an unusual victory but leaving prospects unclear for other trade deals.

In terms of economic consequences, the new trade agreement with Peru is trivial. In political terms, however, it delivers an ominous message. When faced with a choice between money and their own rank-and-file, the Democratic leaders in the House will go with the money, even if it requires them to pass legislation with Republican votes. Even if a majority of their own caucus is opposed. Even if it means handing the shrinking president, George W. Bush, a rare legislative victory.

We have already seen the devastating effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement in Massachusetts. According to conservative estimates, more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last decade alone. Nationally, at least 3 million jobs have been sent offshore, and the wage gap continues to expand.
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Senator Bernie Sanders announced his opposition to President Bush's nominee for attorney general. Legislative action heated up on global warming. A Senate panel took a hard look at how American toymakers' run sweatshops in China. Community health centers got a big boost, and lawmakers renewed an effort to help lower prescription drug prices.

A Senate subcommittee on Thursday held a hearing on Sweatshop Conditions in the Chinese Toy Industry. Americans spent $22.3 billion on toys and sporting goods last year, and China accounted for 86 percent of U.S. toy imports, according to Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee. "Many parents in America would be shocked and disturbed if they knew of the abusive sweatshop conditions under which their children's toys are being made in China," he testified. "Parents, however, have no way of knowing, as toy companies like Mattel (the largest in the world) hide their 40 or so contract plants in China, refusing to provide the American people with even the names and addresses of their plants." Senator Bernie Sanders is a cosponsor of the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act that would make it unlawful to sell, trade, or advertise sweatshop goods.