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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (186033)	4/5/2004 2:35:23 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574751

First off, I think we started out this conversation talking about subsidies, not trade barriers. I was talking about both, and many of the subsidies act as trade barriers or act to distort trade, and most trade barriers also effectively act as subsides. Secondly, all countries have trade barriers to protect certain industries. True, and they are almost universally a bad idea. However, competing is expensive and many third world nations do not have a farm program to bring their farmers up to snuff... Yes but some farmers in the third world can compete, and in any case as I said before - "if somehow they couldn't sell the food without the US trade barriers then the trade barriers are pointless. They either do nothing (so why have them?) or they cut off competition (and so do harm)" Again, which countries are relatively advanced? And its important that they be AS advanced as we are or they really can't compete.....even with cheap labor. Its not just countries, sometimes its individual farmers in a country where most farmers use primitive methods. And it is not important that they be AS advanced. Slightly less advanced farmers with cheap labor can compete, and even much less advanced farmers can compete in some areas with the benefit of cheap labor or better climate. Even in the US farms have different level of sophistication and are not automatically locked out of the market if they fail to stay on the cutting edge of technology and techniques. Well, then you must be happy with the increasing development of trade free zones like the EU. Maybe a little bit. Such trade zones are beneficial to the extent that they have the effect of increasing trade more then they distort trade (treating some countries better then others in terms of trade conditions and barriers). In addition to the problems of distorting trade by treating some countries better then others there is also the problem of having trade and other aspects of economic activity managed by international bureaucracies. Theoretically such bureaucracies don't have to be worse then national or local management but in practice they often are less responsive and also often add an extra layer of bureaucracy rather then eliminating the controls put in place at a more local level. I'd be happier with countries just repealing laws that impose trade barriers or subsidies but politically that is often difficult. Tim