"Free and Fair" trade an oxymoron

[idlisambar]

Both "free trade" and "fair trade" are somewhat ambiguous terms, but there is no sense in which the term "free and fair" trade is anything but nonsense -- the two notions are diametrically opposed.

Politicians, environmentalists, and labor leaders use this nonsense term in order to use string together two positive-sounding words, "free" and "fair", to describe their view of trade. This is understandable but demonstrates lack of understanding and so they come off uninformed to those who are familiar.

Democrats should speak clearly about these issues -- our lack of clarity hurts us rhetorically and reinforces the idea (true as it may be) that as a party we are confused about where we want to go on trade.

For more on these terms....

Free Trade

Free trade is the unhindered flow of goods and services between countries, and is a name given to economic policies and parties supporting increases in such trade.
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Free trade is a concept in economics and government that can refer to:

1. international trade of goods without tariffs or other trade barriers
2. international trade in services without tariffs or other trade barriers
3. the free movement of labor between countries
4. the free movement of capital between countries
5. the absence of trade distorting policies (such as taxes, subsidies, regulations or laws) that give domestic firms, households or factors of production an advantage over foreign ones.

Depending on the specific context, use of the term free trade can signify one or more of the above conditions. In almost all cases, violations of the free trade conditions are due to government-imposed policies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade

Fair Trade

The fair trade movement, also known as the trade justice movement, promotes international labour, environment and social standards for the production of traded goods and services.
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Implicit (and often explicit) in these approaches is a criticism of free trade as being "unfair" for a variety of reasons. The most general criticism is that market prices do not properly reflect the true costs associated with producing the product due to externalities such as environmental and social costs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Is this free and fair enough for them?

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/050718/18trade.htm

Free-Trade Firefight
A Chinese bid for American oil giant Unocal has Congress baring its protectionist fangs
By Matthew Benjamin

Trade fury. There's no better term for the atmosphere on Capitol Hill these days. It's bipartisan, it's increasing in ardor, and it reached a frenzy last month when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed two measures aimed at slowing or blocking the purchase of an American oil company by the state-run Chinese National Offshore Oil Company. Ironically, the Chinese Communist Party responded last week by lecturing Congress on the value of free markets.

[ikri]

2. It is ironic

That the only genuine practitioners of Free Trade, i.e. trade without tariffs or subsidies, are those countries who are getting screwed by the Free Trade system. They're further screwed when they're told that in order to qualify for aid packages, etc. they must open their trade markets to western companies without imposing the same tariffs and taxes that keep their goods from western markets.

Ultimately, the Free Trade system could help many counties out of debt, but only if they are given free and fair access to worldwide markets. But that would hurt western business, so we'll probably invade instead.

[idlisambar]

3. kick

:kick: