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Let's review your questions to me. You wrote:

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.

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.

Nice try, but I never said every member of OPEC was in the WTO. So why doesn't the US take the member nations to the WTO? Colusion to fix prices is 100% against the notion of a free and fair market system, an anethma to Free Trade. Yet the US oblivious to this simple fact. Secondly, the fact that there is colusion to fix both prices and production shoots to s$it your little theory about oil being a commodity that is priced due to supply and demand. Maybe you weren't old enough to remember when oil was used as a strategic weapon against the US back in the '70s. Commodity, right. That's a good one. Maybe you spent too much time listening to some marxist professor in college.

Remember that pig-in-a-poke NAFTA? Remember how Clinton, Kemp and Newt said it would dramatically raise the standard of living in Mexico? All I see is Mexico in the economic gutter since NAFTA was signed. They export over 1,000,000 of their poor to the United States each year (a simple fact most Free Trade apologist over-look) and now we have a border which supplies over 75% of our COCAINE.

But you probably didn't know that did you? Yes, most of the Cocaine had to be flown into the US but now with NAFTA they just drive it right over the border! Yep, it sure was a deal to give up our border for cheap goods and labor from Mexico!

Wait, I forgot, NAFTA did cause jobs in the US to increase for rehab clincs!