Do you support Free Trade ?

Post Reply New Topic

Do you support Free Trade ?

Pat Buchanan's Speech on Free Trade Given to C.F.R
by PATRICK J. BUCHANAN


Address to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations


November 18, 1998


To [the] new corporate elite, putting America first betrays a lack of loyalty to the company. Some among our political elite share this view. Here is Strobe Talbott, Clinton's roommate at Oxford and architect of his Russian policy: "All countries," said Talbott in 1991, "are basically social arrangements...No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary...within the next hundred years...nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority".... This is the transnational elite, our new Masters of the Universe.

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/read.freetrade.html

The Benefits of Free Trade: A Guide For PolicymakersBy Denise Froning
August 25, 2000

International trade is the framework upon which American prosperity rests. Free trade policies have created a level of competition in today's open market that engenders continual innovation and leads to better products, better-paying jobs, new markets, and increased savings and investment. Free trade enables more goods and services to reach American consumers at lower prices, thereby substantially increasing their standard of living.

http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... licymakers

Patrick Buchanan . . . Liberal?; Some Conservatives Disown His Anti-Trade, Anti-Big Business Economics
The Washington Post
See all results for this publication matching your search terms
Browse back issues of this publication by date

Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan says he espouses "conservatism of the heart." But many leading conservatives say it's an ideology that -- on economics, at least -- comes from the left side of the aisle.

"He sounds like somebody from the AFL-CIO," said Stuart Butler, director of domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation and one of the intellectual fathers of Ronald Reagan's shrink-the-government policies. "His notion that you've got to protect the market from the threat of competition abroad, and the threat of people raking off excess profits at the expense of the working person, is far to the left of most of the people in the Democratic …

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-763535.html


February 23, 1996

In my view Free Trade causes the loss of American Jobs and puts American Workers out of Work.

What does everyone think ?

If the countries in question are playing by the rules and not trying to game the system, I support free trade. Countries like China however do not play by the rules and try to game the system by manipulating their currency, in a situation like that I don't support trade with that country at all.

I do not think that it is magic but it seems to be a better way to distribute bread than central planning.

In principle I support free trade but certainly don't support any sort of "free trade agreement"

What rules?


"Gaming the System" is what it is all about.


Hurray!


What rules?


The USA actually comes out ahead, because we can buy megaloads of their stuff at discount prices.



Riiight. So you're going to become conscientious, and refuse to buy anything manufactured in China.

Speaking of "playing by the rules", our taxpayers subsidize American agriculture to the hilt. Mexicans now pay a lot less for their maize products, thanks to NAFTA. However, this has made life more difficult for many small-scale farmers in Mexico.

"Free trade" only works on a level playing field.

Hence, "free trade" among the several states of the United States is essential and successful as a general rule because MOST of the states have similar rules and regulations affecting trade. If one state's rules are hurting its domestic trade, the populace of that state usually has something to say about it and things change (California being a notable exception).

However, between nations, if the rules in one state benefits its own unfairly there is not a level playing field and "free trade" cannot work.

This is why the USA had trade tariffs for a long time....they balanced out the inequites in international markets so that domestic jobs were protected from unfair foreign competition. Without these protectionist policies, the money flows to wherever things can be done cheapest, even if that is because the competitor does not comply with similar regulations imposed on domestic production because the domestic government deems such regulations as essential for the public good.

Absolutely. Each nations should be doing the things it is especially good at.

The U.S. exports entertainment and foolishness profitably. That is our best occupation.


ruveyn

Hoover's protectionist policies (tarrifs on imports) only exacerbated unemployment in the USA.

In principle, international trade seems to be just an extension of interstate trade. In practice, the level of economic development, per-capita income, and regulations are much more different between sovereign nations than between states within the United States. I don't think most Americans want a Third World standard of living for 90% of the U.S. population even if that means cheap plastic toys are cheaper. Of course, the people living in undeveloped nations still need to make a better life for themselves, but I'd rather not see a zero-sum game. In short, I support fair trade—respecting the worker over exploiting the worker.

In principle, I could support free trade were it not for two crucial facts that always seem to get mixed up in actually-existing free trade agreements:

• The fact that most Free Trade Agreements extend patent protection (basically, government granted monopolies - a rather egregious form of corporate welfare)
• The fact that the WTO has an absurd "product/process distinction". You can bar a product because it's quality is poor (i.e. it is drenched in lead; the actual "product") but not because of the way in which it was produced (i.e. the fact that child labour was used to produce it or the fact that environmentally destructive practices were used to produce it; the "process). Their might be some exceptions where "process" considerations are allowed in barring trade, but a lot of environmentally based restrictions have been shot down because of it.

1. On patents, you have to protect them. Patents protect an inventor from someone blatantly copying his invention and selling it as their own. As it stands, if you reverse engineer a product, you get around the patent altogether. Without this, you'd never have an exclusive to a product you create in order to recoup your time and money in the endeavor of inventing something new. Part of why some businesses don't want to set up shop in China is because the Chinese blatantly violate patents and the courts over there do little to nothing about it. Now, if you thing patents last too long, that's a different matter, but I'd not advocate getting rid of the patent process or its protections.

2. Where the UN and its spin off concepts (WTO/WHO/etc.) are concerned, little of what they do has anything to do with benefiting people. Their chief goal is engineering global society to their idea of what it should be. Hence why China can remain free to pollute all they want but all developed nations must embrace harsh (if not crippling) environmental programs.

I support free trade.

As long as other nations do not impose barriers on the U.S. we should not impose barriers on them.

ruveyn