"Free" trade has a price, President Bush

[Joanne98]

On Tuesday, President Bush stumped for free trade in Jacksonville, Fla. Compared to at least one other speech delivered the same day, it would be stretching to call his address newsworthy. He picked a port town that benefits from trade to deliver a well-worn message: Trade is good for America.

This is not an argument that How the World Works disagrees with, fundamentally. But "trade," in general, is a quite different beast from bilateral free trade agreements designed to gain market access for highly capitalized special interests, such as the pharmaceutical industry. And that's what Bush was really stumping for: The president wants the Senate to get moving on three FTAs currently awaiting ratification: deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. You might imagine that during a week in which the deepest financial crisis to threaten the U.S. economy in many years reached a fever pitch, Bush would find other matters to occupy his attention, but no: In Jacksonville, Bush's big lament was how unfair it was that "many U.S. exports going to Colombia face heavy tariffs."

Unhappily for the president, the Senate is evincing very little interest in ratifying the Colombian FTA. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mt., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has his own priorities. He wants the government's Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program beefed up before he is willing to even consider a vote on the Colombian FTA. As he told an audience at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in January:

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/03/19/the_price_for_free_trade/index.html

[izquierdista]

1. Trade is not necessary

Trade is only for the frills in life and not a necessity. In the whole history of man, people have fed and clothed themselves with locally planted and harvested crops and built houses from what was available locally. The Plains Indians derived food, clothing and shelter from the herds of buffalo they followed and when they did trade, it was for trinkets that they could use for adornment. Entire island civilizations survived on what the island provided them, and the occasional ship that came to trade offered them things that made life interesting, but nothing that they could not survive without.

And after the availability of fossil fuels has run its course, the world will return to being a place where people have to survive on what is available locally: food, fiber, building materials and fuel.

[AzDar]

2. A good , basic rule-of-thumb: If George W. Bush is pimping it, IT'S BAD FOR THE U.S.!

That is all.:patriot:

[DCKit]

3. Aside from the chemicals used to manufacture cocaine, what are we selling to Columbia?

Really, I want to know what benefit Joe Public is going to see. Cheaper crack?