Tremonti: Follow the debate in the U.S. Democratic Party.

April 23 (EIRNS)--In a comment made on the Italian national television station Raiuno on April 22, former Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti indicated that the French election debate was characterized by a cross-party preoccupation with the consequences of globalization. "This is something neither leftist nor rightwing," Tremonti said. "In the United States, the Democratic Party is discussing right now how to protect American labor and American industry from the effects of globalization".

Tremonti, a deputy chairman of the conservative party Forza Italia, is seen as a maverick for his endorsement of "Colbertism", that is, state-driven policies for infrastructural development, and for his critique of free trade policies. In 2001, as Finance Minister and during the Italian half-year chairmanship of the European Union, he launched a plan called the "European Plan for Growth" to promote European-wide transportation infrastructure, which became known as the "Tremonti plan," but was eventually downsized by the banker-dominated European Commission.