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Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Beating the free trade conundrum 
| | Not easy for those of us who like free trade to see where Kerry/Edwards will go with the issue, regardless of extant policy statements. |
| | Vote for Kerry if you must, folks. But don't pretend you're doing it because Bush's economic policies are insufficiently free market or fiscally responsible. Kerry wouldn't be any better on economics. He'd be worse. |
| | Update: Robert Tagorda is pessimistic about the Kerry-Edwards trade stance. On trade, Edwards is just a more photogenic version of Dick Gephardt--a new Dem but not a New Dem. He sounds more like Pat Buchanan than Bill Clinton. |
| | [Later...] To those writing in response, I need to clarify that I'm not a free trade absolutist, but rather somebody who leans (but does not fall) in the Libertarian direction on the issue. |
| | Too many trade "protections" are for dead, dying, corrupt or otherwise sickened collections of companies (not "industries" - a blanket word that masks the true nature of the problem) that retain privileged lobbying positions with influential legislators who pass tarrifs that close barn doors on horses that have long since trotted away. |
| | There are, for example, long-standing textile tarriffs (to pick John Edwards' favorite industry) that in some cases have protected approximately no textile jobs in the U.S., but required bureaucrats to hand out export quotas (soon due to end) in protected categories to other governments. Some of those governments then sold the quotas to domestic manufacturers, making money for those governments and raising prices on the products. Quotas have always had good and bad effects, many (probably most) of which are unintended consequences of the original legislation. |
| | So, while I am suspicious of trade-restricting legislation, I also agree that trade is a highly complex issue that often requires rational compromise along with principled policy, whatever the principles involved. |
| | And that's why I also believe none of the candidates, including the plain-speaking George W. Bush, will do what they say they'll do, on the matter of trade. As always, they'll make decisions based on expedience and political pressure, as well as principle. Count on it. Not only here in the U.S., but in Europe and other places as well. |
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