Today’s Free Trade Fact of the Day comes from a Business Week look at how NAFTA has affected the U.S. economy: But the story of GE and Mexico is about more than lost U.S. jobs. Since 2006, GE has struck deals to sell Mexican companies $350 million worth of turbines built in Houston, 100 locomotives made in Erie, Pa., and scores of aircraft engines. GE Capital has amassed $10 billion in real estate, corporate loans, mortgages, and other assets south of the border. This is what a free-trade deal is …
Today’s Free Trade Fact of the Day comes from University of Adelaide economics professor Kym Anderson and Copenhagen Consensus organizer Bjorn Lomborg who write in the Taipei Times: Free trade would lead to an overwhelming boost to welfare everywhere, but especially in the developing world. Grasping these benefits is potentially one of this generation’s greatest challenges. Increased negative sentiment could have the worst possible result: not just Doha’s failure, but also the raising of trade and immigration barriers. These barriers remain largely because further liberalization would redistribute jobs, income, and …
Today’s Free Trade Fact of the Day comes from International Policy Network director Alec van Gelder and IPN enviroment program head Caroline Boin. They write: The World Bank estimates that global free trade in all goods would add $287bn to world income each year, half of that going to poor countries. Sixty-three percent of that immediate gain would come from freeing agricultural trade alone. In African countries, nearly all of that 63% would come from removing their own import tariffs and quotas, which artificially restrict access to other markets, including …
When Congress returns from spring break March 31, President Bush is likely to send the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement to Capitol Hill, triggering an up or down vote on the deal within 90 days. If Congress can put aside its fealty to Big Labor, then the trade deal will easily be approved. Unfortunately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insists on raising bogus objections about curbing violence toward union leaders in Colombia. Pelosi ignores the fact that the number of murders of trade unionists has dropped 75% since Colombia President Alvaro …
With politicians invoking the Great Depression to justify more government intervention in the market place, it is important to look back and remember what policies helped really helped usher in the worst decade for the US economy ever. Amity Shlaes writes at Bloomberg: Hoover knew free trade was beneficial. But his party, the Grand Old Party, was the tariff party. So in spite of himself, he signed a big new tariff, the Smoot-Hawley act, triggering retaliation from U.S. trading partners. For many decades now, Democrats have contrasted Hoover’s concession to …
So far our Free Trade Fact of the Days have been limited to discussion’s of Ohio in particular, our nation as a whole, Colombia, and Canada. But other states would also face economic ruin if liberal presidential candidates are allowed to follow through on their protectionist promises. D. Dowd Muska writes in the Connecticut Business News Journal: Protectionist sentiments matter to Connecticut because international trade is a major component of the Nutmeg State’s economy. Some of the country’s biggest exporters, most notably General Electric and United Technologies, are based here, …
The protectionist promises of the two remaining liberal presidential candidates continue to upset our ally to the north. The Toronto Star‘s David Olive reports that Jim Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister, has come close to “recommending a tutorial for the Democratic presidential aspirants.” Olive continues: By Ottawa’s reckoning, NAFTA accounts for seven million U.S. jobs. … Ohio, for instance, enjoys a $3.3 billion merchandise trade surplus with Canada on more than $33 billion in cross-border trade. But there have been losers, concentrated in the industrial heartland of Canada and the …
The Economist is just the latest entity to cry foul on the protectionist rhetoric coming out of the most liberal presidential candidates this year. The magazine editorializes: Since it came into force in 1994, NAFTA has benefited all three economies, raising cross-border trade and investment. That applies especially to Mexico. Not by coincidence, since the signing of NAFTA Mexico has become a democracy and achieved economic stability. This has not halted the flow of migrants to the north. But their numbers would almost certainly have been greater without the agreement—or …
Since the President’s window for submitting the Colombia Free Trade Agreement to Congress in time to trigger a vote is rapidly shrinking, today’s Free Trade Fact of the Day will focus on the consequences of what will happen if protectionist forces win in Congress. From CATO’s Center for Trade Policy Studies: A comprehensive trade agreement would also benefit Colombia by opening its market to more import competition, encouraging more foreign investment, and strengthening its ties to the world’s largest economy. If Congress were to reject such an agreement, it would …
The New York Times editorial board has become worried that recent protectionist promises coming from the two leading liberal presidential candidates will hurt their movement’s image among the new more upscale pro-free trade members of their coalition. To counteract the perception that liberals are protectionist and conservatives are free traders, the Times afforded one-time Bob Dole adviser Robert Lighthizer the op-ed space to slander the conservative movement as “Grand Old Protectionists.” Lighthizer writes: Free trade has long been popular with liberals, and it remains so with liberal elites today. The …
