If you still think free trade is good for America and the world, you're in for a big surprise...
Debate Ping!
Created an account just to pimp your own book.
Hmmm...
Thanks for posting this! I can’t wait to read it.
The strength of your statements raises doubts about their validity, but I'll suspend judgment until I look through the book. As it stands, the argument is NOT whether free trade is good but whether the trade being practiced is actually free. Your argument may thus be against a straw man.
In addition, you appear to confound the normative and positive aspects in your statements. It would certainly help if you differentiated them.
Again, welcome to FR.
Thanks for posting this. If this name:
“Jim Hightower, Bestselling author, national radio and newspaper commentator, and editor of The Hightower Lowdown.”
does not bring all Freepers to see the light on the great benefits of free trade, I am not sure what will.
As to these names:
“Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America)
Brian O’Shaughnessy, Chairman, Revere Copper Products; Co-Chair, Coalition for a Prosperous America
John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO and author of and author of America Needs a Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice.
Gavin Fridell, author of Fair Trade Coffee: the Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice, Assistant Professor of Politics at Trent University.
Dan DiMicco, Chairman and CEO, Nucor Steel Corporation and author of Steeling America’s Future: a CEO’s Call to Arms.
Pat Choate, Running mate of Ross Perot in 1996 and author of Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America.
Leo W. Gerard, President, United Steelworkers.
Bob Baugh, Executive Director, AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council “
Freepers need to know you want them on the same side as Unions and Big Business. And what was it Adam Smith pointed out about owner getting together... Oh wait you Adam Smith is no one to you, you go with Union bosses, right? You imagine that when workers and bosses agree on something like protection it is necessarily good for consumer or the rest of us right?
And then there are the loons. I have kept a couple of examples:
“Gavin Fridell, author of Fair Trade Coffee: the Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice, Assistant Professor of Politics at Trent University.
Pat Choate, Running mate of Ross Perot in 1996 and author of Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America.”
certainly all Freepers want to side with Social Justice guys and Perotistas. Too bad they did not go for the big guns and get Obama and Osama to endorse this book. They are both against Free Trade too and I know all Freepers know they are the side they want to be on.
Again thanks for posting this. With endorsements like this book has, perhaps we can get all Freepers on the side of FREEDOM on this issue as in freedom to trade with whomever you think will benefit you the most.
What ever happened to Fair Trade?
Same old claptrap. But hey, if you’re lucky Obama will manage to start a trade war with china and some other countries and we’ll see the wonderful effects of it on our economy and our country’s future.
Your basic premise is flawed. We do not and cannot have free trade. We have a collection of very complex trade agreements along with international groups that resolve disputes about the agreements. The agreements have many flaws and countries try to gain competitive advantage in various ways. The US plays heavy with trade agreements so the situation is not so asymmetric.
I do not believe that the trade agreements are the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is our growing lack of competitiveness. Unions, trial lawyers, and environmentalists along with rat political control has eroded our competitive level. If unions had their way about trade agreements, the price of goods and services would increase substantially and the quality would decrease. In just one year, the rats have dropped a debt on us that we may never recover.
How would anyone know this? Very few, and the good ole USA is certainly not among them, have attempted it in any of our lifetimes!
Yeah, competition sucks, doesn’t it?
I think someone just signed up today and left a deposit on our lawn.
Welcome to FR.
There are a good number of ideologues here who will bristle at your assertions. Ready to blow themselves and everyone else in the country to bits at the altar. One thing they ignore - “Free Trade” as currently practiced is not free - not a tiny bit.
Even if it were, we’d be nuts to embrace it. The Law of Diminishing Returns does not favor overdeveloped nations. Lower trade barriers, and capital flows out of the country like water through a broken dam.
The only thing we’ve actually done is lower barriers to competition from overseas without removing any of the burden that comes from operating within US borders. The results have been nothing if not predictable. Our industrial and GDP growth have slowed to a crawl or reversed. Deficits are skyrocketing.
Our economy and national defense capability have been comprimised. Our technological edge is being blunted by piracy and outright surrender. We are rapidly ceding our bargaining power when it comes to foreign policy and resource markets. Thanks to porous borders and non-existent immigration enforcement, we’ve become a welfare sugar daddy for Mexico and Central America. Deficit spending just accelerates things. We’re financing China’s ascendancy from our own Treasury.
This is a bad joke that’s gone on long enough.
I’ll try to check the book out.