They make an interesting case that free trade is essential for jobs. In that, they're aligned with Adam Smith, the Austrians, and other free-market economists.
What do you think of their analysis?
“What do you think of their analysis?”
Same old deceitful America-hating crap.
Frankly, no one listens. You might get a yob or two yelling about “traitors,” but that’s about it.
So many Globalists being outed. If they didn’t have an axe to grind they would have actually defined Trump’s position accurately. All of these establishment types use a strawman approach. There is no “Free Trade” now, only trade that is stacked against the US and for other countries. Trump is just trying to even out the situation. America sorely needs someone to look out for her interests. Trade will in the end be just as “free” as it is at present.
Let me know when we have free trade. If they are arguing the monstrous, managed trade by supra national entities like WTO and NAFTA and TPP are ‘free trade’, then they are dumber than a bag of hammers.
Watch what the US and the UK work out bilaterally with Trump and May in the near future. That will be as close to free trade as we are likely ever to get.
This sounds like it could have been written by the pea-brained Bret Stephens of the WSJ
Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group
$89,267 from Koch foundations 1997-2014
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is a free market organization with offices in Irvington, New York and Atlanta, Georgia that publishes The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, a largely libertarian publication. Unscientific skepticism and obstructionism regarding global warming are promoted both on FEE’s blogs and through The Freeman–including Willie Soon, whose grants since 2002 are exclusively from fossil fuel interests, and the promotion of two books by discredited industry apologist scientists Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.
… “[I]n general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.” …It does beg the question as to what Marx would have thought. The irony of Xi Jinping, perhaps the biggest protectionist in the world, touting free trade at Davos; is that lost on Marx’s statement here, or is it compatible?
This is an idiotic article.
An “agreement” of thousands of pages with thousands of dos and don’ts is not what I call free trade.
There are hundreds if not thousands of terms in all these “free trade” pacts that the various countries fight over to benefit their individual countries. So a shrewd negotiator like Trump wanting to look at them is not anti-free trade. it’s simply someone who thinks the other countries have gotten the better end of the deal.
They were not free-trade from the beginning.
If you want real free trade you don’t need any government to government agreement. You just let individuals and businesses trade on their own across national boundaries with no hindrance from the governments.
And I totally agree with him about not having trade deals that involve dozens of countries and with governing bodies who have more power over us than our own government.
He likes bilateral agreements which I think is a much better way to go.
Just WHERE are all of the JOBS that NAFTA was supposed to make materialize in the USA?
Is this a lefty think-tank?
There, fixed it!
Regards,
I know the difference between the two, and I also know what free trade really is.
The chief obstacles to free trade are China and Germany. Germany is the leading European source of instability in Europe. There is a relationship here.
I think it wasn't Adam Smith, it was David Ricardo and the year was 1817.
The flaw in the FEE article is that what is going on isn't trade, it is international labor arbitrage, something unforeseen by Smith and Ricardo. Paul Craig Roberts has written about this.
Our trade rivals, particularly in Asia, have mastered a model where they keep their home markets restricted for their domestic producers by means of non-tariff barriers. This gives their producers are guaranteed market as they fight it out with American manufacturers for the American market. Our companies, without a guaranteed home market, are at a big disadvantage right from the start.
Countries have interests that go beyond getting the absolute cheapest price on consumer items. Our competitors understand this and as long as they can take good employment away from us and for their own citizens they will do it all that they can.
America's massive manufacturing capacity was once known as The Arsenal of Democracy. You better pray that we don't need it now or any time soon.
And of course, once again, 90 million able bodied people out of work is not a calamitous policy outcome.
Screw these jackasses!
“... TPP would cause a loss in manufacturing jobs but a gain in ‘service’ jobs ...”
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Which one creates more value?
Making stuff and selling it, or buying stuff from someone else and selling it?
I think it's shallow boilerplate. Free trade is good because free trade is good, blah blah blah.
Except by their definition, free trade means that the US has applied no barriers for others. Whether others have applied barriers for our imports seems to be irrelevant.
No such thing as “Free” trade. We ship goods into countries who tax the livin hell out of them making them expensive there, while they ship into our country basically tax free.
Big dif between “FREE” and “FAIR” trade. Trump is NOT against fair trade. He is against free trade where it is a one way street.
So the queston is..what are their arguements on that fact? Are they for undercutting our goods going out and being taxed by foriegn countries while we take goods from those countries tarrif free? How does this benefit our manufacturing here in the USA?
Well, considering that the only CONSTITUTIONAL way for the fedgov to STEAL money is from tariffs, perhaps Trump is on to something
Perhaps you so called ‘free-market’ types do not mind funding unemployment, and welfare in this nation.
I need the Reader’s Digest version; her writing is not “user friendly”.
Read Ian Fletcher’s “Free Trade Doesn’t Work”: “What Should Replace It & Why”. A country is about more than just widgets. It’s about culture, family & place. Free trade, or whatever is practiced now, is obviously not working. Ian’s book explains some of the hows & whys & what to put in place to fix it.