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A Free Trade Apostate Speaks
You could consider this as part of The Confessions of an Unapologetic Isolationist. A free trade apostate, if you will. As such, it saddens me to see the editorial board of the Washington Post climbing in bed with the Unfair Trade for America crowd. In their column, “Drop Dead Colombia” the editors take Nancy Pelosi to task for not immediately throwing open our trade doors to yet another country and laying out the red carpet for whatever will rush in – or more to the point, out – through that portal.
Read the entire column here.
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4 Responses to “A Free Trade Apostate Speaks”
As the article says, this is a “no-brainer”. The current trade situation with Columbia imposes tariffs on US Goods and services exported to Columbia at a rate of 35%. Goods and services currently imported from Columbia are free of tariffs. So, ratification of the Trade Deal would only effect the US exports to Columbia. The effect would be to reduce the price to Columbians thus increasing demand for the US goods. Increased demand would lead to greater exports to Columbia of US goods and services to Columbia which would in turn create jobs in the US and help to shrink the overall trade imbalance, though to a very small extent.
That is the logic of the Deal, please let me know if I missed anything on the economic side of the argument, the side that seems most important in a slowing economy.
“please let me know if I missed anything on the economic side of the argument”
That's just it. Not everything can be reduced to economis, as it translates into immediate profits.
At issue, are labor laws and labor conditions, specifically the way Colombia stomps on efforts to unionize.
There is a legitimate argument that the race to the bottom for American workers could be better balanced if labor conditions were better balanced. in the countries of our trading partners.
In this case, I don't think it will work, because the US alone will not persuade Colombia to change. iNevertheless, it's about time someone highlighted the issue.
The myth that markets will self-regulate and that everything will balance out in the end (an end receding further and further into the future) needs to be confronted..
While it is a global problem and needs global attention, I admire those who refuse to hide behind myths and slogans lo look at some real here-and-now problems and the real nere-and-now- people being affected.
They didn't even correctly punctuate it (with the requisite comma before “Colombia”), but used typical dumbed-down contemporary English? Well, consider the people to whom such an appeal is being made…
PWT, this isn't nearly as simple a matter as that.
First, Columbia isn't going to save our economy. It's a tiny market, and not one that buys a lot of Chevys no matter what the price.
Second, it is not true that Columbia exports tariff-free to us. When we want to protect agribusiness interests in the US, we do. Columbia can produce sugar cane, but we have a 100% tariff on all sugar from anywhere (first to protect US sugar cane and sugar beet interests, and now to maintain a corn syrup monopoly in soft drinks).
And look at cotton. Cotton subsidies are $4.5 billion and the entire US cotton industry $5.9 billion. That government largess goes not to family farms in the deep south but to huge agribusiness companies in Texas. That's right, 76% of the US cotton industry is tax dollars. There's $4.9 billion you can put right back in the US economy without hurting family farms or American workers (you don't want to get me started on sugar, corn or citrus). And speaking of family farms,
Third, these free trade deals destroy rural agriculture here and abroad. They have done so in Mexico because of NAFTA, and would do the same in Columbia.
Fourth but not last, these deals are a major driver in deforestation and hence global climate change. Carpeting Columbia with giant American-style farms would be yet another devastating blow to the Amazonian rainforest.