"Ed Huntress" wrote:

John Carroll has some thoughts on countertrade. My own thought is that it's
another example of the trap you get yourself into when you try to be the
leader on promoting "free" trade, when world trade is anything but.

I agree with you, I believe that the 'free trade' agenda needs to be turned into a fair
trade agenda. If another countries environmental and worker safety rules do not line up
with ours then a tariff should be imposed.

Now placing a cost for our regulations in calculating the tariffs, that could contentious,
I'm not sure if policy makers would want to actually cost out our regulations.

I believe we have been getting rolled for years. Consider South Korea and how they change
their regulations to keep American cars out of their country for an example.

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

John Carroll has some thoughts on countertrade. My own thought is that
it's
another example of the trap you get yourself into when you try to be the
leader on promoting "free" trade, when world trade is anything but.

I agree with you, I believe that the 'free trade' agenda needs to be
turned into a fair
trade agenda. If another countries environmental and worker safety rules
do not line up
with ours then a tariff should be imposed.

Now placing a cost for our regulations in calculating the tariffs, that
could contentious,
I'm not sure if policy makers would want to actually cost out our
regulations.

I believe we have been getting rolled for years. Consider South Korea and
how they change
their regulations to keep American cars out of their country for an
example.

Wes

That's all true. What's not clear is the consequences of getting tough with
trade. John and I discuss this in e-mail frequently; I continue to base my
thoughts on the research I did for my China trade articles that I was
writing in the early part of the last decade. But I think the principles
remain pretty much the same even now.

The short version is that nearly every country's natural tendency is toward
protectionism, and protectionism results in a decline in economic activity
for all trading partners involved. I'm not going to defend or explain this
point; it's Economics 101 and it's agreed among legitimate economists of the
right and left. It's easy to look up good, expert explanations of it.

The US has used its economic strength and authority for decades to promote
freer trade, with outstanding success. If we started imposing non-tariff
barriers we'd start a trade war. Tariffs would require dissolving the WTO,
and also would start a trade war. That's what happened in the 1930s, and the
result was a world-wide depression. Widespread protectionism would
absolutely crush levels of employment all over the world, not the least in
the US.

As for what can be done about it, it's a very big and complicated question.
So is the question of whether we're better off doing nothing about it. Like
the issue of thinking about the US debt in terms of home economics, the
simple "common sense" solutions basically make no sense at all, once you
start looking into it thoroughly.

So don't jump to conclusions. There are no simple answers.

--
Ed Huntress