Posted on 09/17/2002 9:06:14 AM PDT by madeinchina
Having pushed fast track trade negotiating authority through Congress, expect American multinational companies and their Washington minions to press all manner of novel ideas to send jobs and manufacturing out of the country. A case in point in a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, which Korean business interests report has "gained momentum" in Washington in recent years.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has introduced no fewer than two bills authorizing the administration to negotiate a Korea agreement and instructed the U.S. International Trade Commission to study the likely effects. For good measure, C. Fred Bergsten's Institute for International Economics, which never met a job-exporting deal it didn't like, has signed on as well.
But maybe the globalization extremists are getting a little cocky. The President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea recently assessed an FTA's likely impact and openly admitted that "the benefits to Korea will well exceed the benefits to the U.S., because the increased exports from the U.S. to Korea will be agricultural products while Korea's exports to the U.S. will be much higher value-added products."
In 1776, the American colonists revolted partly for fear of an eternal sentence to be low-wage, raw materials suppliers to imperial overlords. Now that they know that the multinationals today have a similarly degrading scheme in mind, the administration and Congress would never go down this road, no matter how much they're receiving in corporate campaign contributions -- would they?
("A Big Win-Win Game: Interview, Mr. Jeffrey Jones, President, AMCHAM in Korea," Bridging the Pacific [Korea International Trade Association], Issue XIX, August, 2002, p.2; Inbom Choi Jeffrey J. Schott, Free Trade between Korea and the United States" [Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics], May, 2001)
Funny, I don't see free traders getting indiginant about foreign tarriffs (check China's tarriff rates) or protectionist regulations (check the EU's countervailing duties on steel) overseas.
Sure we do.
Isn't that usually the case? Free-traitors rejoice, while the rest of use keep waiting for the benefits of free trade. The truth is that it is free for everyone else, that is why they squeal like stuck pigs anytime we try to cut off the gravy train.
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