[staytrue]

The freer the markets the freer the people!

I would say that there should be massive tariffs on countries that regulate foreign investment. No more Nafta when mexico barrs much if not all US ownership of capital. Ditto for Cafta. Ditto for China and a lot of other countries.

Free trade of goods is okay only when free flows of capital and investment are allowed also.

Bottomline, foreigners can easily invest here. The reverse is not true. So capital comes flowing in, which means a US trade deficit must occur to balance this out. Regulation of capital flows is just as damaging to trade in goods and services as any tariff would be.

[Southack]

"No more Nafta when mexico barrs much if not all US ownership of capital. Ditto for Cafta." - staytrue

No, NAFTA is the opposite of what you just said. It is NAFTA that forces Mexico and Canada to allow Americans to invest there on an equal footing with the locals.

Take the stock PVX for instance. I had to file a NAFTA complaint against Canada because the Canadians had a law that barred Americans overall from owning more than half of a Canadian firm. In other words, prior to NAFTA, Canada said that all American investors, whether they knew each other or not, could not in aggregate own 50.1% of a company like PVX.

NAFTA, however, has an entire process in place for Americans to challenge such unfair treatment. Same goes for Mexican property investment in resort areas.

With NAFTA, Americans have a process to challenge the discriminatory laws of Mexico and Canada. Without NAFTA, we were having our stocks and resort properties literally confiscated at will by Canadian (in instances such as PVX) and Mexican (for resort homes) authorities.