[lelio]

Since China joined the WTO, it has become America's sixth-largest export market. U.S. exports to China grew 75 percent over the last three years,

Robert doesn't give you the raw numbers and instead relies on trickery to make you think things are grand.

China's large installment purchases of billions of dollars of U.S. products --including soybeans, cotton, and manufactured goods -- during recent purchasing missions bode well for 2004.

While Robert cheers that they might purchase 1% (in dollars) of their trade deficit with us, I have to wonder how much of what they're buying was originally made in China. That and what politically connected donors are getting their goods bought.

The Chile and Singapore FTAs, which Congress approved in 2003, use innovative new mechanisms to meet the labor and environmental objectives set out by Congress in the Trade Act of 2002.

Laying off thousands of Carrier employees and setting up a plant in Signapore a couple months after this was signed is now called "innovative"?

It is a vision of a world in which a working family can save money on everyday household items because trade agreements have cut hidden import taxes.

Give me a break. Robert Zoellick's "vision" is for the US to become a nation of brokers, which I can't see as sustatinable.

[hedgetrimmer]

Robert Zoellick was never elected to public office and is not a member of Congress. He should not be making any trade policy or decisions based on those two facts.

[A. Pole]

Give me a break. Robert Zoellick's "vision" is for the US to become a nation of brokers, which I can't see as sustatinable.

Even the Swiss do not rely on banking to support their small nation. They export watches, chocolate, dairy and countless other products. They do not outsource much (unless they own companies in other countries) and they do not rely on mass immgration to replenish themselves. Having a gun at home is mandatory and their democracy is perhaps the only true one.

300 million people can not live out of financial services and printing money.

[Paul Ross]

China has become a major consumer of U.S. manufactured exports, such as electrical machinery and numerous types of components and equipment.

TRANSLATION: They are buying up at pennies on the dollar our closed and bankrupt factories which are then shipped (imported) lock stock and barrel and set up in China with the assistance of their U.S. partners (the 'services' they are buying). This is not 'trade'. This is conquest, 'booty' and 'spoils'.