[CowboyJay]

Article by: RAMESH PONNURU , Bloomberg News

Consider the source alert?

Free trade is a fine thing to aspire to, but it has to be completely bilateral to work. If you have one partner acting in good faith, but the other either openly or tacitly playing at mercantilism, then they are setting the de facto terms-of-trade for both parties. It also doesn't work out so hot between cultures with vastly disparate values.

We have huge differences in immigration, property, labor, and regulation with places like China, India, and Mexico. I really wouldn't want to live in any of those places. If we keep our markets open to them, we'll eventually import their culture.

Free trade looks great on paper. In practice, it's economic and cultural suicide.

[buwaya]

Its a review by Ponnuru of a book by Levin.
And Ponnuru has pretty good conservative credentials.
He is the editor of National Review after all.
As for free trade or not, the jury is in, on a worldwide basis at least. Peace and prosperity, beyond anything ever seen.
We, here, have problems. They are peculiar to us and others who have made similar errors. We, here, have caused most of them. Germany for instance doesn’t have such a problem with free trade.

[OneWingedShark]

Free trade looks great on paper. In practice, it's economic and cultural suicide.

Bollocks.
All you need for it to work is a society which values the Just Law.
Immigration, property, and labor are all much better when every man is equal under the law; granted the Citizen may have more rights [and responsibilities] than the immigrant, but the central/core rights are the same.