So Rudeboy...
I asked a few questions yet didn't get any answers. Care to answer them? Where is all that economic utopia that the FT's were droning on and on about? I see lots of huge trade growth figures, yet very little high paying jobs coming into the nation. Where is all the industrial jobs? Where is the enormous economic growth figures? And dont' give me the figures from the Clinton era which we now know were not legitimate.
Well would you care to explain this contradiction then? I mean the FT's promised utopia in trade and economics yet it has not appeared to have played out that way. Oil's closer to $60 a barrel and has plenty of upside left. This is because of a cartel. Isn't the whole idea of a cartel against free trade? If it is, why doesn't the US Govt. take OPEC to the WTO? Hmmmm??? Oil at $50 a barrel is not good for the economy yet there appears to be no free-trade mechanism at work to correct the power of the cartel. Sign me confused at trying to figure out all the promises that were made in the '90s. When will that uptopia they promised get here? Or is it here and no one knows it?The only time I've seen the term "utopia" used in any dialogue about economics is in discussions of Marxist theory, although I'm not sure if he or Engels actually used the term. Your insistence that your "opponents" on this thread (and others) respond to an argument that is a product of your own imagination, i.e., "where is the utopia I was promised?" is an almost textbook example of the strawman fallacy.
Oil is a commodity. Commodity prices rise and fall due to variations in supply and demand. The notion that prices can or will only go down as the result of any trade agreement is not only another strawman, but as a notion, is particularly puerile. The U.S. has not brought action against OPEC at the WTO because not all OPEC countries, including the one most capable of affecting oil prices--Saudi Arabia, are members of the WTO. I'll repeat: Saudi Arabia is not a member of the WTO. Your failure, until now, to grasp this simple fact makes me wonder what other fundamentals of global politics and economics you do not comprehend.