What is your opinion of free trade both as to whether you support it or not and why so.
It is interesting in my opinion that many of the same socialists/leftists who would like some sort of world government or at least international cooperation via the UN and whatnot are opposed to economically linking the world via free trade. Incidentally many of the supposed “detriments” of free trade such as Mexican farmers being hurt by NAFTA are due to unfair US subsidies to its farmers rather than free trade itself.
I think environmental damage should be factored into the cost of trade somehow. Part of the reason third world countries can compete in manufacturing is because they can just go ahead and dump nasty shit into the water and the atmosphere and not worry about the expense of properly handling pollution or using cleaner and safer materials.
But while some pollution is localized, we’re all living on the same planet. I’d hate to see the world incentivized to ship jobs off to the places which will cause the most environmental damage to do the maximum possible damage to the world per widget produced. And yet that’s the trend.
I would be okay with tariffs that were in line with how much enviornmental damage the product does. If somewhere in China or wherever decided to use western standards of pollution control, then there’d be no cost. If they’re dumping millions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere, they’re no longer going to be the cheapest product on the market. If it helps, use the tariff revenues to fund pollution cleanup, environmental projects, geoengineering, etc.
If it’s too hard to track individual companies and products, you’d have to rethink your trade agreements with countries that don’t have, or enforce, environmental regulaton.
Pure free trade, for instance, would benefit nations with no pollution regulations. Since we don’t really want the world’s seas to be a mercury dump, it is in our interest to put some regulatory pressure on such nations.
A perfectly free market leads to “robber barons,” child labor, pollution, kickbacks, insider trading, etc. A few regulations are needed to keep the corruption down.
That said…we also don’t want punitive tariffs, politically-based vendettas, and trade wars. So…much freedom is desired…but not total freedom.
Yeah, pretty much. The excesses of either extreme are best avoided; the problem is added to given the number of countries in the world ensuring that any one nation’s trade policy is going to have to take context into account, rather than being purely philosophical in nature.
As an aside, that’s a pretty impressive poisoning of the well, Qin.
It’s obvious because you fall into lockstep with whatever your government says? I wouldn’t have said that about you.
An OP of “socialists/leftists do this thing which seems hypocritical” and “here’s, for no particular reason, one example of “detriments” of free trade being shown to be false” seems rather poisoning the well.
Economic links without political links can cause problems. Look at Europe, for instance. They wouldn’t be in this mess if Greece and Italy had been playing under the same political rules as everyone else. And since they share the Euro those countries can’t devalue their currencies to ease the pain of readjusting their economies.
If we had a world government with everyone operating under the same environmental, safety, tax, and employment rules then free trade would make sense. Of course, we don’t even have a level playing field here in America. Instead there is a race to the bottom with state and local governments competing to bring in companies.
So you’re saying that there is a relationship between how Cubans are treated in their country with our willingness to do business with that country? What a fascinating idea. I wonder if supporters of Fair Trade will ever pick up on this novel policy…
I don’t need someone in Washington to tell me what I can buy from someone in China. Anyone who is concerned with working in conditions in China can freely refrain from buying products made there. We got rich while polluting the planet, and now that we’ve got ours, we want everyone else to be green.
It’s easy, as Americans, to try and force countries to play by our rules. But what if you’re a relatively small country like Denmark? How much of an effect on China are you going to have by raising tariffs? All you do is punish your own citizens by raising prices.
And we built our country partially on slavery, and yet I would want us not to trade with countries that use slaves to create products.
Allowing mistakes to be made because there’s a precedent for such mistakes is a shitty way to live. And we know more about how exactly we’re damaging the planet now.
Why should they have to take into account the wishes of Cuban-Americans? Should France have to suck up to French-Americans in order to have normal trade relations?
The world has bigger issues than just what you need or don’t need. Trade policy produces societal outcomes. That’s what’s important here. How it affects everyone and not just you.
Many of “We” are the very same corporations that are continuing to pollute by operating in nations that lack environmental regulation or are buying products from there. Trade isn’t as simple as this country and that country. Corporations can play on both sides of a border.
You don’t just raise prices, you build incentives for domestic production. A strong manufacturing base strengthens a nation both economically and socially (by broadening the middle class). Some countries are simply too small to take advantage of this but Denmark is hardly one.
Well, then you should advocate that we pay the developing countries to not pollute or enslave instead of levying tariffs on them. Because if you make it more difficult for developing countries to develop, you’re just increasing the possibility that those “sweat shop” workers will be stuck in a life of subsistence farming.
