Posted on 05/15/2015 12:03:20 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
That free trade is advantageous to both sides is the rarest of political propositions – provable, indeed mathematically. David Ricardo did so in 1817.
The Law of Comparative Advantage has held up nicely for 198 years.
Nor is this abstract theory. We’ve lived it. The free-trade regime created after World War II precipitated the most astonishing advance of global welfare and prosperity the world has ever seen.
And that regime was created, overseen, guaranteed and presided over by the United States.
That era might be coming to a close, however, as Democratic congressional opposition to free trade continues to grow.
On Tuesday, every Democrat in the Senate (but one) voted to block trade promotion – aka fast-track – authority for President Obama, which would have given him the power to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal being hammered out with 11 other countries, including such key allies as Japan, Australia and Singapore.
Fast-track authority allows an administration to negotiate the details of a trade agreement and then come to Congress for a non-amendable up-or-down vote.
In various forms, that has been granted to every president since Franklin Roosevelt. For good reason. If the complex, detailed horse trading that is required to nail down an agreement is carried out in the open – especially with multiple parties – the deal never gets done.
Like all modern presidents, Obama wants a deal. But he has utterly failed to bring his party along.
It’s not just because for six years he’s treated all of Congress with disdain and prefers insult to argument when confronted with opposition, this time from Democrats like Elizabeth Warren. It’s also because he’s expended practically no political capital on the issue. He says it’s a top priority. Has he given even a single televised address?(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
It seems to be more than simple trade agreements. The devil is in the details.
“Last year we had a 342 billion dollar trade deficit with China. A new bad record, in a long history of ever-increasing terrible records with China.”
If this was affecting the elites the same way it affects the average American, it would change.
This proves that capitalism is not what distinguishes decent people from communists.
So what? New York had a trade deficit with Illinois. I had a trade deficit with Walmart.
Countries have trade deficits.
Your examples are entities within the country’s borders. I have no problem whatsoever with Texas, competing with California. None at all. Texas will win by the way.
What we are facing internationally is much more destructive, and I don’t support what we are doing at all.
America needs to support, and to build up America.
Krauthammer is a McConnell toady and that’s weird, a high IQ scholarly fellow following after a dumbass.
I've long said that this is a very complicated issue, and one of the things I've found is that it lends to oversimplification in so many ways.
Personally, I believe the U.S. government is under tremendous pressure to maintain and expand these trade agreements because we see it as an absolute necessity in maintaining the status of the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency. I keep informed about major trends in commerce and trade as part of my work, and in the last few years I've seen something that I had never seen before -- and which probably raises all kind of alarms in Washington: articles, conferences, and research publications about global trade that have no mention of the U.S. as a major player on the world stage.
I think the opposite.
America is giving away the status of the dollar as the global currency, precisely because we are giving away America’s superiority in global markets.
We are destroying our very own nation.
Making up your own definitions?
The U.S. currently has about 4% of the world's consumer base. There are probably more people living (and working) within 2,500 miles of Singapore than in the rest of the world combined. Think about that for a moment and ask yourself what makes us "superior" in a global economy if that's where we stand.
My definition is, I am an American.
I repeat, Countries have trade deficits. America at the moment, has a HUGE trade deficit with China.
342 billion dollars last year. It is steadily and rapidly growing, every single year.
It appears to be much worse this year as well.
It is at very least worse, for the first three months.
So what precisely is your point?
That was not my point.
I think we are selling off our superiority, along with everything else which is great about our country.
Both parties. “For sale”.
It's hard to grasp this when we look at an issue just in the context of what we've seen in our lifetimes, but the sobering truth is that the "superiority" you describe was really just an anomaly of the post-WW2 decades when the U.S. was the only major industrial power that hadn't been decimated during the war. We may have had less than 10% of the world's population but we probably had more than 80% of the world's GDP at one time -- but that was only because the rest of the world wasn't capable of producing very much. That has obviously changed, and we'd better come to grips with it because that's the way it's likely to be for a long time.
People, even those who think of themselves as free market conservatives, shy at the idea of unilaterally going free trade but done properly in regard to regulation and taxes that would make the USA a powerful magnet for the world's investment dollars and the other economies would have to do likewise or ossify and decline.
If we did all that in one fell swoop, possibly prices would go up briefly but then would enter a long decline and wages would begin a long and rapid rise.
That all could be done in thirty days. Another requirement for the maximum benefit is the sidestepping of American universities or untying them from government- shoving them into the market. All government subsidies and regulations of academia should cease. The reinvention of education in America might be not so rapid but it would occur and America would again be the locus of most of the brainpower in the world. Processes that even now are slowly replacing the communist cocoon that is our university system would blossom and existing universities would shed their tenured and unprofitable drones or founder and would have to begin teaching real subjects again as they did 65 years ago.
You said it right.
Charles failed to mention the Brigadeers that are agin it
Because of that, the US pursued multi-lateral trade via the WTO.
But, as the US, overtime, lost that competitive edge, we shifted away from expanding multi-lateral to pursuing bi-lateral and regional trade agreements, as well a concentrating on our own back yard.
The first prez to pursue this with fast track authority was Reagan with Israel, the Caribbean Basin Initiative(which would eventually be replaced with CAFTA), and bilateral agreements with Canada and Mexico.
Under GWB Bush, the two bilaterals would become the trilateral NAFTA.
Under GW Bush CAFTA was completed and Chile was completed. Bush began the bilaterals with Columbia, Panama, and Korea and they were completed under Obama.
Keep in mind that Bush was not able to complete those 3 agreements because the dems blocked them because they thought the investor protections were excessive and Obama renegotiated them with more protections for labor and environment.
Who cares about trade deficits? Why do they matter? I have formally and informally studied this for years.
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