1985: Ronald Reagan articulated the goal of Western Hemisphere free trade
Reagan’s belief in the twin policies of deregulation and free market trade reinvigorated the American economy in the 1980s. Under Reagan’s leadership, we initiated a series of measures to ensure increased opportunities to sell American-made goods and services overseas, believing that exports equal jobs for Americans.
It was Reagan who first articulated a goal of free trade in the Western Hemisphere. America’s first free trade agreement with Israel, implemented in 1985, was a Reagan achievement. A US-Canada agreement followed. In 1986, Reagan launched the Uruguay Round, a series of talks aimed at the reduction of trade barriers among more than 60 nations. NAFTA, providing substantial trade benefits to US firms seeking to conduct business in Mexico and Canada—our best customers—was another initiative of the Reagan-Bush years.
Reagan’s faith in free trade principles was vindicated abroad by the crumbling of state-controlled, centrally directed communist economies.
Source: Agenda For America, by Haley Barbour, p.177-178 , Apr 25, 1996
Obama is not quite as trustworthy, as patriotic, as Reagan, don’t you think?
Reagan’s trade agreement with Canada was the last good trade treaty.
TPA is a tool like a hammer. In the right hands it is constructive, in the wrong hands destructive.
That was then, this is now. We had communism on the run. Now the left has had 30 years to propagandize our youth and push the agenda. Now we have Marxist operatives in our White House. Our house! We can’t live on Reagan forever. We can honor his legacy, but just because something was relevant 30 years ago, doesn’t mean it’s relevant now.