Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Anyone who is not 100% in favor of all trade agreements is a Communist or a Nazi

Apparently any position other than being in support of every free trade agreement is "extreme."

I'm actually on the fence about most "free trade" agreements--I'm not automatically for or against them and I see costs and benefits on both sides of every trade agreement. Most, if not all, are a real mixed bag, usually with the negatives hitting the least economically insecure harder than they benefit from the positives. Besides, none of these trade agreements are really "free trade" agreements. They generally lower tariffs without eliminating them and include a bunch of horse trading over tariff rates for particular categories of goods. If they were really free trade agreements the treaties wouldn't have to be so long. It just takes a single sentence to reduce all tariffs on all goods to zero.