When we use our foreign policy and economic policy to set up shop and trade with countries, societies, organizations or to implement policies that exploit their people's mercilessly, who keep them down without a hope for true liberty or freedom, who trample the moral values our own system was based upon...and when we do it knowingly, without compunction for those very underlying values, then we do not create a free market...no, that free trade has nothing whatsoever to do with, and is in no way similar to the FREE MARKET, rather, it serves to corrupt it.
Thanks much for writing this, Jeff.
Thanks for the pings, guys.
Having been there in the far east, having worked with Chinese, Indians...and also over in Eastern Europe with Romanians after the fall of the wall...we need to be very direct about how nations and societies who are the antithesis of everything it is based upon, can earn access to the free market.
Right now, we are letting those who do not practice, or intend to ever practice, those fundamental principles, have tremendous sway on our economic welfare and the free market...and it is corrupting it.