Germany and China to 'fight together' for free trade, says Merkel

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday stressed their commitment to free trade ahead of a G20 finance ministers’ meeting set to be dominated by debate on protectionism.

The two leaders spoke by telephone and said in a statement issued in Berlin that they would “together fight for free trade and open markets”.

Finance ministers from the world’s top economies are gathering in Germany from Friday as fears grow that US President Donald Trump could upend the global economic order with his “America First” policy challenging open markets.

Meanwhile, Merkel is set to hold her first meeting with Trump in Washington on Friday, on a trip on which she will be accompanied by a top-rung German business delegation. …

Of course. They are only following Marx’s lead on this score.

[I]n general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

Germany, like the U.S., is nominally a free-trading country. The difference is that while the U.S. genuinely believes in free trade, Germany quietly follows a contrary tradition that goes back to the 19th-century German economist Friedrich List (who was, ironically, a student of our own Alexander Hamilton, the man on the $10 bill). So despite Germany’s nominal policy of free trade, in reality, a huge key to its trading success is a vast and half-hidden thicket of de facto non-tariff trade barriers. That these barriers exist is not especially controversial, even among those who espouse free trade and thus deny that they serve any useful purpose.

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Interesting quote from whom Fletcher only identifies as “one German”, on there.

Germany as a whole has nearly 48% of its economy is some shape or fashion state controlled or run. The German is not even really fully aware of the true tax load he’s under, nor the proportion of government that controls his life.

Tell most Germans that the FRAPORT [airports] is a state entity and they are perplexed and confused. Explain to them about the GEZ, and how ARD, ZDF, HR3, SWF, DW, BR3, NDR, WDR etc. are more or less state-run entities and they are in disbelief. But the truth is, these agencies get their money through a tax that the state controls and their CEO is state-appointed by a committee. The Deutsche Bahn [national railway system] is another state entity, as is the Telecom.

This blast from the past merely wears a new name: the “social market economy”. And it’s being imposed on the entire EU via treaty under that name.

The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance. …

That is from the first paragraph of Article 3, section 3 of the Treaty of Lisbon. And the progressive politicians of the USA actively encouraged the formation of this, after WWII and decades following.

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