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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elsewhere who wrote (30813)	5/26/2002 3:22:38 PM
From: Gulo	Respond to of 281500

I can't tell you how glad I am to see that article appear in the New York Times. Trade freedom is the single most important issue facing the third world. I'm glad that all sides now, at least in principle, agree. What we need now is the political will to resist the special interest groups that are destroying our democracies. I hope the 'activists' that take an anti-trade line shrink to an ever smaller minority. Rarely has so much evil been advocated by people that mean so well. >Until the most deprived nations succeed in ending armed conflicts, controlling disease and making sure their people have enough food to eat, they said, talk of being able to being able to compete on international markets is irrelevant, some activists said. I think it is clear that the opposite is true. The deprived nations will not be able to end conflicts, control disease, and feed their people until they are able to use trade to leverage their comparative advantages. Maybe there is hope yet. -g

To: Elsewhere who wrote (30813)	5/26/2002 9:34:44 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I was gonna post that myself; glad you beat me to it. It basically makes the point I was trying to make yesterday better than I could. uncwest's concerns about the political viability of lower trade barriers are legitimate, but could be overcome, I believe, if an administration was truly interested in moving forward on the issue. (I say administration, because the legislative branch is incapable of thinking of the good of the nation as a whole, and bound by nature to represent an agglomeration of small special interests rather than a larger public one.) What it would take would be first, straight talk about just how much the US benefits from the current world system and thus just how much it is interest to preserve and strengthen it. second, straight talk about the positive sum nature of free trade. third, honesty about how rich we are as a country and thus how possible it is for us to afford a free trade policy, and even to afford compensation for the few losers such a policy would create. A small fraction of the money spent on the recent tax cuts, for example, could underwrite generous compensatory benefits for those who would lose jobs because of truly open US markets. All this would require a combination of brains, pro-trade-ideology, a willingness to use government creatively in the public interest, and great political skills. It was tailor-made, in other words, for Bill Clinton, and his unwillingness to put much political capital behind such a project is a huge black mark on his presidency, IMHO. tb@selfcenteredscumbag.com