Free trade is the race to the bottom. When our living standard is at the level of Costa Rica, free trade will be a good idea. until then, no.

We have exported millions of jobs due to one thing: Cheap fuel which encouraged trading American jobs for Chinese jobs + long-haul trucking. What will slow it down is HUGE gas price increases. When gas gets to be $6/gal, American production will again be competitive, and I might think again about free trade.

You will be pleased, then, to see Speaker Pelosi is holding a vote tomorrow to deny "fast track" status to the proposed Columbia free trade agreement which the President has submitted.

Don't know and don't care what Kevin makes, but as soon as The Washington Monthly figures out how to outsource the blog to Mumbai, he is toast. Maybe his local Jack-in-the-Box will be hiring.

I think there are two killer arguments for free trade:
1) Consider the alternative. E.g., the "import subsitution age" when every country had its grubby inoperable steel plant and its potentially lethal airline. When unions and management conspired together so we could all drive overpriced crap cars.
2) Even if it were true that free trade is a "race to the bottom," what then? Is there any moral, principled, reason why we in the US ought to live well while the rest of the world goes to hell?

I would disagree that trade is "pretty free." Seems to me we still have a long way to go with ag subsidies, and with trade in services.

Of course you are right about exporting US IP rules. But that isn't a problem of free trade, it is a problem of exporting crappy IP rules. Anyway, lots of free market free traders would join you on this one, thinking your view entirely consistent with freer markets.

Kevin Drum: Trade is pretty damn free these days.

Wrong. Some reasons:

1. "Intellectual property" protection is antithetical to free trade - it's the ultimate in artificial government restrictions on trade. The original free traders of the 19th century understood this, and opposed it. Nowadays people say things like "I'm a free trader who believes in strong IP protection", which is like being a Yankees fan who roots for the Red Sox.

2. Currency manipulation. The buck has dropped against most currencies, maybe even too much, but it hasn't fallen nearly enough against the yuan (thanks to the People's Bank of China picking up a spare trillion or two in foreign reserves).

3. While the US has generally low tariffs, many of our trade "partners" don't. For example, China has IIRC a 30% tariff on car parts.

4. Various nonsense, like multi-tier tax structures that favor exporters in some countries, VAT rebate for exports, investment "incentives", yada, yada, yada.

In short the idea that we have free trade, or anything approaching it, or that our trade agreement's net effect has done much to improve the situation, is a joke.

Oh, and the benefits from Doha would be minimal at best. See

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/dont-cry-for-do.html

Kevin Drum: Trade is pretty damn free these days.

Wrong. Some reasons:

1. "Intellectual property" protection is antithetical to free trade - it's the ultimate in artificial government restrictions on trade. The original free traders of the 19th century understood this, and opposed it. Nowadays people say things like "I'm a free trader who believes in strong IP protection", which is like being a Yankees fan who roots for the Red Sox.

2. Currency manipulation. The buck has dropped against most currencies, maybe even too much, but it hasn't fallen nearly enough against the yuan (thanks to the People's Bank of China picking up a spare trillion or two in foreign reserves).

3. While the US has generally low tariffs, many of our trade "partners" don't. For example, China has IIRC a 30% tariff on car parts.

4. Various nonsense, like multi-tier tax structures that favor exporters in some countries, VAT rebate for exports, investment "incentives", yada, yada, yada.

In short the idea that we have free trade, or anything approaching it, or that our trade agreement's net effect has done much to improve the situation, is a joke.

Oh, and the benefits from Doha would be minimal at best. See

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/dont-cry-for-do.html

Trade makes everyone wealthier. Off shoring is not trade and looks like a real transfer of wealth. Many of those dollars China is holding would have been earned in the US without the rush of US capital to transfer mfg labor to a low wage behemoth.

Buce: Even if it were true that free trade is a "race to the bottom," what then? Is there any moral, principled, reason why we in the US ought to live well while the rest of the world goes to hell?

From what propaganda did you get the bizarre idea that "free trade" improves conditions in developing countries? The countries that have done best under "free trade", like China and Japan, have been highly mercantilist.

Kevin,

I once figgered out that I had paid a million six in taxes -- and almost all of it was the import duties on the American dryers that went into the first 400 coin laundries I built in Japan.

The income taxes paid by the 27 Mexican workers in Dallas, Texas, who made the machines paled in comparison.

I've been sorta halfassed about my own tax returns -- and I am about to start up a Bahamian company, Advanced Lumber Products, to look after the financial well-being of my daughters and grand-daughter (and any future grand- or great-grand- children they choose to give me).

I once, when I worked for Thorne Ernst, audited the tax returns of my friend and classmate Conrad Black, Lord Crossharbour, now a resident of Florida, and I found that he paid exactly what he felt like paying. He threw a million a year Canada's way, because that's how much he felt he owed Canada. He paid more serious taxes in Britain and the US, not because he felt like it but because those countries had assets of his under their control, so he didn't have too much choice. He has always been generous in his private charitable giving -- and incidentally his net worth is not nearly as much as the yellow press suggests -- and what we have here is a decent man behaving is a sensible and moral way.

To conclude: tax is now and always will be a mix of the governments' aims and stated "policies" and what people decide it is fair to pay.

That's it.

-dlj.

We have exported millions of jobs

Manufacturing jobs are not trade goods. Those jobs were not traded for anything. One set of people was replaced by another. Capital maximized labor at the nation's economic well being, using a less expensive input combined with low import costs to increase profits. A net outflow of money from the economy that otherwise might have been earned here is gone as a surplus to those who have exploited that labor. Free trade ideology was exploited to manipulate the political economy to make this transfer possible, now we are paying the price with wealth destruction.

"Personally, I think "Happy Birthday" ought to be in the public domain by now."

This profound piece of analysis was brought to you by one of the American Left's leading thinkers.

May God save us all.

Yeah, the current form of American intellectual property property protection is anti-free trade. The pendulum has swung so far in the direction of protection that it can be barely seen by a rational observer. Also, those of us who really do support free trade have been screaming bloody murder about agricultural tariffs and subsidies for years and years. Nice to see that one of the bigger corn-whores in D.C. is Senator Obama, who is oh so concerned about building positive relations abroad.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04092008.html
Government employs 22,387,000 Americans, 8,744,000 more than manufacturing. Even the category leisure and hospitality employs 13,682,000 Americans, slightly more than manufacturing. There are as many waitresses and bartenders as production workers.

Im thinking more trade isnt the answer.

Lesson #1 for Jared Bernstein - "Free" trade is not fair trade. I don't particularly feel uplifted by buying goods made by prison (read - slave) labor in China or Indonesia. Stop being so blind to the atrocities committed in the 3rd World to give you a cheap iPod.

Lesson #2 - The US economy lost 98,000 private sector jobs in March, half of which were in manufacturing. Today 13,643,000 Americans are employed in manufacturing, of which 9,849,000 are production workers.

Government employs 22,387,000 Americans, 8,744,000 more than manufacturing. Even the category leisure and hospitality employs 13,682,000 Americans, slightly more than manufacturing. There are as many waitresses and bartenders as production workers. This is not a picture of a healthy economy. When you don't produce anything of tangible value, you have no prospect of building long-term wealth.

Lesson #3 - U.S. imports in 2007 were 17% of US GDP, according to the National Income and Product Account tables provided by the Bureau of Economic Affairs. In contrast, the BEA industry tables show that in 2006 (2007 data not yet available) US manufacturing comprised only 11.7% of US GDP.

If US imports actually exceed total US manufacturing output by 5% of GDP, it is not possible for the US to close it's massive trade deficit without trade protections (read - tariffs) or restructuring. Even if every item manufactured in the US was exported, the US would still have a large trade deficit.

We are well and truly fucked until we realize that every other large world economic power uses tariffs and duties to boost and maintain their indigenous manufacturing base. American cars sold in China, for example, are subject to 20% tariffs. It's time to get smart about our foreign trade or we are on our way to becoming a Third World country.

Free trade should have been concentrated on the North American continent. Maybe we would not have had such swell deals on cheap nylon novelty socks, but we would have combined the benefits of cheaper production costs with the concentration of wealth here and in our backyard. Most U.S. trade should have been between the three partners the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

And we could have helped push for a more evolved court system in Mexico, more health care and protections for Mexican workers, more environmental protections in Mexico.

We would have had cheaper priced goods made in Mexico AND discouraged illegal immigration AND spread the cause of democracy in Mexico AND worked for greater integration with our neighbors in Canada and Mexico.

A single North American currency, anyone?

Ha-ha-ha. But, really, that's what I would like.

With regards to manufacturing jobs, China has lost more manufacturing jobs than the U.S. Manufacturing is a disappearing employer in most countries. Blaming free trade for the loss of manufacturing jobs is misguided. Manufacturing is going the way agriculture jobs went in the early 20th century. Those who try to protect manufacturing jobs through tariffs are fighting the wrong war with the wrong weapon. The divide is not between Chinese workers and U.S. workers, the divide is between those with educations and skills and those without. This is true whether you are in China, Germany, America or Costa Rica. Our challenge, every countries' challenge, is to find ways to help the undereducated and under skilled.

Trading is something they did in the 18th century.

Today we are engaged in global competition, and losing. Free competition means pressure to lower US wages to the world average of about $5000/year; being willing prey to predatory practices such as dumping, targeting of our industries and jobs, counterfeiting; pressure from corrupt officials on the business pad such as Jorge Bush and Juan McCain to open borders to tens or even hundreds of millions of new legal and illegal workers to drive down wages, and so forth. Jorge actually made an agreement with Vincente Fox for open borders in order to marry Mexican labor with American capital, but this was scrapped after 9/11.

OMG!!

Seriously Kevin, the nice thing about you is that you truly are willing to reappraise your views in light of new evidence. That's rare.

I have never understood NAFTA. In Ontario, many opposed it and still do because US companies benefitted at their expense. But then US workers oppose it because they are hurt by it. That has always thrown me. So where is the benefit if both US and Canadian workers oppose it? The only choice is Mexico. But if they benefitted so much, how come so many immigrants have gone to the US from Mexico?

My conclusion? It can't be looked at nationally, or by state or province, to be understood. You have to think in terms of business sectors. It benefits the most efficient business sectors, not political areas. But then politics steps in to help the inefficient, so we end up with tariffs like the notorious softwood lumber tariffs that Canadian producers hate so much. They block efficiencies. I suspect the economic efficiencies are lost in political dealmaking that NAFTA was supposed to do away with. The resulting mess makes the EU agreements look miles ahead of what we North American rubes have created.

Feel free to shred my conclusion. I'd like to get a handle on NAFTA.

Trade shouldn't have become this free in the first place. Thanks, DLC Dems, not just the Slickster and the Slicksteress, but plenty of others.

Bob, the real "giant sucking sound" came from China via the WTO, which had far fewer environmental and labor rights protections than NAFTA.

I find it funny that both Clinton and Obama, and labor-rights squishes, whether DLCers or bloggers, can focus on NAFTA and ignore the WTO. Alex and Conservative Deflator are right.

I'm with you, Kevin. I also support free trade at a near knee-jerk level. But when I push those against free trade on specifically why, I tend to agree with each detail. I still fundamentally believe in the equalization process brought about by globalization, but the details are full of devils.

Taking a breather to rethink how we approach trade seems pretty reasonable at the moment.

Kevin, no!!

You mention "intellectual property", but in law, there is no such thing. Consider patent, copyright, and trademark:

Patents and copyrights are intellectual, because you can learn from them, but they aren't property -- they are temporary grants of control, more like rental than ownership.

Trademarks, by contrast, are property: They can be held in perpetuity. But they are just labels -- they aren't intellectual because you can't learn anything from them.

Therefore: If it's intellectual, it isn't property, and if it's property, it isn't intellectual.

"Intellectual property" is a blatant misnomer, and using the term fosters confusions that have led to unprecedented legal interference with the evolution of knowledge and culture.

"Lesson #1 for Jared Bernstein - "Free" trade is not fair trade. I don't particularly feel uplifted by buying goods made by prison (read - slave) labor in China or Indonesia."

So how do you feel about buying products and services made by AMERICAN prison labor? We have the largest prison population in the world, and quite a lot of them work providing various services and products for the outside world. It's not just license plates. I'm sure you've seen the guys mowing grass and picking up trash on the highways. But did you ever wonder who sorts through your recyclables? Or cleans up storm damage? Or who's taking your credit card number when you make a purchase over the phone? Here's a hint: the American prison system gives Bangalore a good run for their money when it comes to making and answering telephone calls. Our prison labor system may be the biggest in the world. And we all pay for that labor, even if we don't know it.

Also, everyone should read Floyd Waterson's comment. It's spot on.

What I want to know is why we haven't decoupled the rights between recordings and authoring.

Why is it that a movie that was misprinted in 1970 should be 'public domain' while the guy who made it is still alive - as were the people who made the recording, all verifiable - but 'Happy Birthday' as a concept isn't, and its author is dead and gone.

Ugh. Look, I have no problem with the mouse company having the right to profit from releasing endless reprintings of the movies the company made eighty years ago. What I have a problem with is that the stories they wrote and the ideas they created are forever locked up.

...I also have a problem with people being able to sell or inherit their rights to stuff. Such deals should be limited as should the author's original rights. How long ago was Peter Pan written?

fostert:

I refuse to knowingly buy any goods made by people who have no choice in whether they produce it or not. I also challenge Floyd's assertion that China has lost manufacturing jobs. It isn't possible, given their near 10% annual GDP growth. Floyd makes a good point that our challenge, every country's challenge, is to educate their people. No question.

We can't just sell each other variable annuities, we have to produce something, anything of lasting tangible value.

TCD

Looks like Dems are using already-passed trade pacts as an IP bludgeon:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic lawmakers urged President George W. Bush on Friday to file new trade complaints against China, the European Union, Japan, Canada, Mexico and others at the World Trade Organization. {snip} The lawmakers also proposed action against Mexico, Canada and France for failing to protect U.S. intellectual property rights and said Washington should insist Russia make much more progress in that area before being allowed to join the WTO.

Here's a quotation from the website of The Conference Board (and dated July 2004):

China is losing more manufacturing jobs than the United States. For the entire economy between 1995 and 2002, China lost 15 million manufacturing jobs, compared with 2 million in the U.S., The Conference Board reports in a study released today. "As its manufacturing productivity accelerates, China is losing jobs in manufacturing – many more than the United States is – and gaining them in services, a pattern that has been playing out in the developed world for many years," concludes The Conference Board study. The report from The Conference Board is the result of a joint research project with The National Bureau of Statistics of China. The study is based on data for the 51,000 large and medium sized firms in China’s manufacturing, mining and the utilities industries. While the study focuses on the larger firms, the study's authors say the same patterns are observed among smaller firms.

Here again is Floyd's post from earlier: With regards to manufacturing jobs, China has lost more manufacturing jobs than the U.S. Manufacturing is a disappearing employer in most countries. Blaming free trade for the loss of manufacturing jobs is misguided. Manufacturing is going the way agriculture jobs went in the early 20th century. Those who try to protect manufacturing jobs through tariffs are fighting the wrong war with the wrong weapon. The divide is not between Chinese workers and U.S. workers, the divide is between those with educations and skills and those without. This is true whether you are in China, Germany, America or Costa Rica. Our challenge, every countries' challenge, is to find ways to help the undereducated and under skilled.

The net loss in jobs in China’s industrial sector between 1995 and 2002 was 4 million jobs, which is the sum of 15 million jobs lost and 11 million jobs gained.

You know those trey stupid socialistic European countries that provide safety nets for their citizens? They're kicking our butts.
Or as the "Olde Europeans" say: "Hey Bushy, how's that Iraq thing going?"

I missed any reference to the fact that the Columbia FTA involves cutting Columbia's duty on imports from the US. Caterpillar tractors, for example, are made by union labor in the US and exported to Columbia. After this mess, I expect they will lose out to Japanese heavy equipment manufacturers and the lefties will complain about losing more US manufacturing jobs. Another Democrat circular firing squad.

Thanks, Sean. I humbly stand corrected on the loss of Chinese manufacturing jobs.

TCD

Very poor post. Not much analysis and a lot of armchair quarterbacking, and I say this while agreeing with the conclusions. Point #5 "A lot of us who supported NAFTA are sort of wondering what happened to all the benefits that were promised. As near as I can tell, there's a pretty widespread agreement that NAFTA, on balance, hasn't really had much net impact" shows a remarkable lack of erudition.

Jared wants to fight to protect the rights of workers in foreign countries. Why? So that imports won't be as competitive and American workers will get higher wages. So foreign workers will, er, lose their jobs because their employers can't sell their products in the U.S. any more.

All of this "analysis" overlooks the benefits we obtain from cheaper, better products. That's not surprising, because people generally measure prosperity by income.

It's close to impossible to make headway on free trade because all the developed countries simply refuse to put agricultural subsidies on the table. "Anyone who pretends to be a free trader ought to be screaming blue murder about this. So why aren't they?" They are, Kevin. It sounds to me like you just want to walk away from the rest of the world. The Obama and Hillary campaigns reveal an intense nostalgia among liberals for old-fashioned populism, in rhetoric if not in action.

To Conceptanalysit: It is called intellectual property to contrast it to real property; intellectual propery refers to intangible assets, and yes, trademarks (e.g., goodwill) is intangible. There is no semantic conspiracy.

Free trade is a convenient fiction, just so much economists psychobabble. As Kevin noted, the benefits to the rest of us never quite seem to materialize. And the supposed "free traders" in the US never step up to the plate on ag subsidies, etc. Yes, Kevin, why aren't they? Because they ain't free traders, they're just businessmen looking to increase or protect their margins. It's not complicated. Free trade is great when they gain, bad when they lose or when it benefits those who aren't already wealthy. Yes, I believe there is a class element to all this.

The failure to fix "harmful impact on the working class" never happens. You should be asking why more often, and offering your views.

I believe the cause is class related; the very wealthy often opposed any measures that would benefit those they perceive as undeserving. I'm willing to listen to other views, but that's mine for now.

Kevin posed several interesting questions. Now I'd like to see an exploration of the answers.

I don't understand two things about this issue. The first is, why don't the Democrats make a bigger issue out of the protections that doctors and lawyers and other professionals get? It's only fair to subject them to foreign competition like we do other workers. And perhaps non-professional workers might feel the negative effects of trade a little less if the costs for the services they use, such as a doctor's visit, went down. I know the Democrats are having increasing success in attracting the votes of professionals, but it seems like an issue that might help them get the votes of the working class. The second is, why don't they make a bigger issue out the gains being distributed more evenly? We can do this through worker retraining, income tax credits, and other means, if that's the basic way that we can make sure the gains of trade are distributed a little more evenly. If there is another way, please tell me. It's been a few years, but I seem to remember the second part of the introductory trade talk in economics classes to be that distributing the gains between the winners and losers is an important part of the process. Am I delusional, or is that correct?

Globalization and "free trade" are artifacts of the era of cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy which will soon come to an end with the exhaustion of high-quality, cheaply-extractable oil and the rapid phaseout of all fossil fuels that is required to prevent catastrophic global warming.

"Free trade" as practiced by the WalMarts of the world depends not only on cheap labor in Chinese sweatshops but on cheap transport and will become extinct when skyrocketing energy costs make it no longer profitable.

In the post-peak oil, near-zero-carbon future, economies will be based on local and regional production of goods for local and regional consumption.

"Estimates are that U.S. trade with low-wage countries explains 20 to 30 percent of the increase in wage inequality over the past generation."

Is this right? What's the source? It does not accord with my understanding.

I thought that up until the 90s, the studies showed that the effect of trade on inequality is modest, as imports from cheap labor developing countries did not represent a large percentage of the overall economy. But Krugman and others are looking to see whether the dramatic increase in manufacturing imports from China with its dramatically lower wages alters that conclusion. So far, while theoretically it should (at least to some extent), it has been difficult to substantiate.

Link to Krugman's draft article on the issue.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/pk-bpea-draft.pdf

SecularAnimist: ... economies will be based on local and regional production of goods for local and regional consumption.

And think of all the grief we could avoid if we started making the transition now. Even without the contamination issues, how fucking nuts is it that we're importing foodstuffs from China?

The change will come, whether we want it or not. But we being the kind of silly-ass chimps we are, it isn't likely to happen on a significant scale until it's forced upon us. And boy, is it going to hurt.

Trade is pretty damn free these days. There's really only a limited amount of progress left to be made.

Really? Seems to me movement of labor and consumers between markets is still pretty restricted, while movement of goods and capital is fairly freely. International commerce is free for them what have lots and not at all free for them what have less. What is free and what is restricted is exactly what makes it easiest for major capital holders to play one jurisdiction against to create pressure to keep taxes, working conditions, environmental regulations, etc., down (with the threat of moving jobs), while allowing them to extract the maximum price for their products in each jurisdiction through market segmentation. Which shouldn't be surprising, since the major holders of capital are the ones who designed the trade regime.

From Kevin's original post: (3)...pass trade agreements today and fix their harmful impact on the working class tomorrow. But tomorrow never seems to come, does it?

Everyone that's surprised raise their hands. My admiration for Al Gore is genuine but substantially reduced by the part he played in ramming this shit down our throats.

Free trade, as well as immigration, has historically been imposed to lower local labor costs. In the language of neoliberalism this is called “controlling inflation”. It always for rich people to capture more real income. The political factions that backed this sort of ‘reform’ were particularly clear in Great Britain in the early 19th century when the ideological free traders- mostly the followers of Smith and Richardo in Parliament- went along with the wholesalers to defenestrate mercantilism and the labor protections of the old economic order. But in this period deregulation tended to be limited to a single industry like weaving.

Today neoliberalism has similarly been used against socialist economic controls and risk-sharing schemes that were put in place, in part, to mitigate the old excesses-the rich getting too much of the income- of the first phase of economic liberalism. In the old 19th century economy the effect of stagnant or downward wages was direct. This contributed to a great deal of resentment toward the established order dominated by the upper classes and led to great waves of social unrest. But under the new so-called Anglo model of neoliberal free trade the effect of stagnate wages was been masked by credit and cheap imports. Now the scheme is coming undone and concerns over income disparity and the shrinking middle class are again entering politics.

Why is it that the same people who are surprised Iraq didn’t work out as promised are also the same people who wonder why free trade is not the boon it was billed to be?

You mention "intellectual property", but in law, there is no such thing.

The actual law disagrees with your fantasy here, as a perusal of any treatise on property law, or even any law dictionary, would reveal.

Patents and copyrights are intellectual, because you can learn from them, but they aren't property -- they are temporary grants of control, more like rental than ownership.

A leasehold is a temporary grant of control, too; it is also well-established in law as a (real) property right. So is a stock option, well established as an (intangible personal) property interest. Permanence is not an essential character of a property right.

Trademarks, by contrast, are property: They can be held in perpetuity. But they are just labels -- they aren't intellectual because you can't learn anything from them.

As in many other areas of law, the term "intellectual property" doesn't mean what the terms "intellectual" and "property" mean independently naively blended (neither, for that matter, is "real property" or "personal property" such a simplistic combination of its constituent words.) It is a term of art for a subcategory of the broader class "intangible personal property". The meaning of "property" is the same as its sense elsewhere in law (a sense you seem to misunderstand with your misguided focus on permanence as a necessary element of property rights), the use of "intellectual" though is special jargon.

Exactly what, in the 16 years of NAFTA, has been the OVERALL positive influence of this incredibly crappy idea on the US? We have lost millions (NOT AN EXAGGERATION) of high-paying manufacturing jobs. In return, we get to purchase toasters for 19.99 that last 3 weeks, break and cannot be repaired.

If we get into a war, we are in deep, deep, deep shit. No one in this country can fix anything anymore. The American idea of the "shade-tree" mechanic is long-gone.

I see NOTHING good about free trade. It's just a way to tell Americans "Your standard of living is too high. We are going to lower it."

...under the new so-called Anglo model of neoliberal free trade the effect of stagnant wages was been masked by credit and cheap imports.

I would add that *necessities* such as housing, health care, food, education, etc. that can't be easily imported have continued to inflate and that has shrunk discretionary incomes to near zero or less than zero. That's the rub. Real incomes have to keep up with the cost of major necessities. It really seems that the last 10 years that global economic policy has had one primary purpose: Manufacture a bunch of cheap crap elsewhere that we don't really need, so that MNC's can make more profits and our politicians and bankers, etc., will do everything in their power to squeeze out every last dollar from the American consumer to fuel this. Well, we're starting to run on fumes now. I've got this niggling paranoia that everybody is going to run out of money all at once.

What te hell kind of english is "he loves himself some cheap imports"?

Drezner: ...even skeptics of trade liberalization...supported NAFTA because it locked Mexican economic reforms, promoted political reforms, and cemented a stronger bilateral relaionship[sic].

Bullshit. NAFTA ended up being a way to exploit a country with cheap labor costs, lax economic and political controls, and low environmental standards. There's nothing that 'locked in' making Mexico a better place for the bulk of its citizenry; words on a piece of paper, maybe, but no teeth to enforce those words.

Hillary Clinton's proposals to renegotiate FTAs every five years or so is such a God-awful idea..

Bullshit. Again. Drezner's arguing that it is better stick to an agreement that is of - at most - little benefit to the countries involved than it would be to work towards something better.

Gandalf loves himself some English grammar. But not Capitalization. ;)

Thersites, back in 2005, we became a net food importer for the first time in history, as far as I know. Sierra had a story on it.

And, Kevin just officially won his "weakest post of the week" award by linking to Drezner. Pseudo-liberalism arises in the OC again.

Grape_crush: I think Hillary's idea is bullshit, but from the left, not the right. It's a way to kick promises five years down the road.

"Oh, we'll renegotiate labor issues! Oh, we'll renegotiate environmental issues!"

Actually, from a pure free trader perspective, US agricultural subsidies are a good thing for poor countries, since consumers in those countries benefit from cheaper food. US taxpayers are the ones who take it up the nose.

These trade agreements are about perpetuating American copyrights and patents, and imposing them on the rest of the world. They amount to the outsourcing of intellectual property enforcement, to the same countries where the manufacturing jobs have been outsourced.

What should really be done is the opposite. American IP rights should be declared unenforceable outside American boundaries. Let Matel negotiate their own trademark and copyright agreements with the Chinese, if they choose to offshore their toy factories there.

Actually, from a pure free trader perspective, US agricultural subsidies are a good thing for poor countries, since consumers in those countries benefit from cheaper food.

Short-term, sure; OTOH, in the long term, it reduces the incentive to invest in domestic agriculture in those countries, and thus reduces the already small pool of viable domestic industries (which often consist of agriculture and, maybe, resource extraction to start with, so scratching agriculture off the list doesn't leave much.) "Cheaper" food doesn't help them if they've got nothing left to sell in the international market to buy it with in the first place.