Free Trade...yeah, sure , rightttt

An Open letter...


Don claims to support free trade. Our government IS making the argument FOR free trade insisting that China not impose illegal tariffs and underprice their currency... effectively a tariff. Don is siding with the Chinese government and telling us our government shouldn't be concerned with tariffs and currency manipulation. He is clearly putting low price ahead of protectionism and even economically sound policy. How can he claim to be for free trade and NOT speak out against Chinese tariffs??? Hmmm?

Don doesn't care that the Chinese government is NOT following free trade. In fact he seems upset with our government FOR insisting on free trade. He is more concerned with us getting low cost things from China than with free trade. He is looking only at the short term gains of low prices when many experts are warning of the long term disaster that looms if the situation doesn't change. He seems oblivious to the current disaster that is our economy and it's relation to too many years of unbalanced trade. Further Don's position does not follow from the writings of Adam Smith or Ricardo. His argument also fails from any modern economic perspective and is NOT what American's want. The current state of our economy should make that abundantly clear but he seems not to notice that his personal situation is not representative of what the rest of the American people are going through. Living in the tenured ivory tower with back up from the vast holdings of the wealthy elites and their think tanks HE has little to worry about no matter how bad things get. He is beholden and backed up by the king makers and all their power they exert over people who are not with in their domain. His is the modern day position that the Tory's of the Revolutionary times took before they had to scurry out of this country when the righteous revolution took their power and exploitation away. The american people want jobs before low prices. Many many experts (even Martin Wolf, who Don recommended I read to learn about free trade) disagree with the argument Don is making. They suggest the current trajectory is a recipe for continued global financial stagnation or worse.

When Don says he is for free trade I think he means if we lived in a global libertopia. But the real world is not any where near what he wishes it to be. In the real world global trading agreement exist and many much more complicated issues make simple minded application of libertarian principles irrelevant if not dangerous.