Posted on 12/10/2004 6:32:24 PM PST by mojojockey
I still do not understand conservatives who oppose NAFTA. From studying free trade, I think the free market moves assets to where they are needed the most. But a hour or so ago, I heard a fill in host on Michael Savage's show advocating that NAFTA isn't good for our country. He cited "outsourcing" as bad for this country, and saying that the messed up, harsh working conditions that China workers face, is what we will eventually face on American soil if we allow free trade economics such as NAFTA. I find this sort of logic, hard to follow.
No. There are solutions Usually more than one.
But I suppose you can call owning a firearm in the face of threats to your life, costing the expense of ammo and oil, and the revenue of saving your life, a "trade off" against not having a firearm and not having to buy ammo and oil.
But I would call owning a firearm in that situation a solution, the consequences otherwise being intolerable. No difference with "free trade". 
The cosequence of owning a firearm is that you are safer, and better able to defend yourself. Costs or consequences are not necessarily negatives.
If you have to pass a law to make it happen is it free trade?
Well we have a supply and demand economy. As long as folks here are looking for the cheapest prices, there will be a demand for cheap labor.
When my grandfather sold his house to my father, he had nice fruit trees in the yard, years old. The house was well taken care of for years, so my father benefited from these blessings. But my grandfather didn't do these things because he planned on one day passing the house on to my father, it was the fact that he spent his hard earned money on the house, and wanted to keep it up and get the highest possible resale value on the house whenever he decided to sell it. The beautiful fruit trees in the yard, will be there for future generations to enjoy, although my grandfather never was able to see them fully mature. He didn't plant them with future generations in mind, only his own property value was what he was thinking about.
My point exactly.
One of the first examples of this trend was the War Between the States. Prior to the war, the South wanted free trade because it wanted the less expensive and better quality English and French goods at lower prices. The North wanted tariffs that would allow northern manufactured goods to compete with English and French goods. As each side was considering how to win a war, the South believed that the English and French would run any blockade set by the North in order to continue trading. The South learned that when the lead starts to fly, "free-traders" are the first to disappear. In times of national emergency, we don't want to be forced into relying on other nations to produce what we need.
Another issue is that true "free markets" depend on those who want to produce something paying all of the costs necessary for production. Much of the world has the security to run factories because the United States maintains a military that prevents thug nations from attacking those who try to produce things. If these little nations running factories that employ peasants and peasant wages were responsible for their own defense, the prices of their goods would be much higher. Likewise, many of these places have the infrastructure to sustain manufacturing only because they have received foreign aid from the United States. If we want "free trade" based on "free market" production costs, then we need to stop subsidizing overseas production.
China is not a free country. The worker in America is not competing with Chinese labor that is free to demand better wages for their work. When companies can operate under the conditions available over there, they can save labor costs because they are not dealing with a labor market in the same way that they would be in a free country.
Part of having allegiance to our country is that we try to do things that benefit the country as a whole. Deciding what policies fit that description is hard, but forcing Americans to decide between working for a couple of dollars a day or not having a job isn't something that benefits the country as a whole.
Finally, tariffs are the least intrusive form of taxation. An income tax puts the tax man into every part of your financial life. An income tax means that the government knows how much you make, how much you save, how you invest, whether you buy or rent your home, whether you marry, whether you have children, and a great deal of other information. A national retail sales tax would be less intrusive because the government would be interested only in when Americans buy and sell to one another, but a sales tax still puts the tax man in every commercial transaction. A tariff confines the tax man to the end of the dock. With a tariff, the government worries itself with what is coming into the country. (After 9/11, the government probably should be paying attention to what comes into the country.) However, once things arrive, the government doesn't put itself into any other part of our business. We can probably never go back to a system of having only tariffs, but tariffs are a step in the direction of less intrusion by the tax man.
Bill
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