{"id":191744,"date":"2009-06-29T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/29\/who-obama-is-on-free-trade\/"},"modified":"2009-06-29T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-30T04:00:00","slug":"who-obama-is-on-free-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/29\/who-obama-is-on-free-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Obama Is On &#8220;Free Trade&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cap and trade barely passes the house, and <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124621613011065523.html#mod=loomia?loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r2:c0.0770758:b26121668\">Barack Obama is wringing his hands about how the tariff against nations with weaker measures<\/a>, &#8220;At a time when the economy world-wide is still deep in recession, and we&#8217;ve seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Barack Obama is a smart guy.  He <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">knows<\/span> that there are similar tariffs in countries that have a VAT, so that you cannot evade the tax by outsourcing production, and he knows that the economic consensus is that the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">absence<\/span> of such measures <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">distort<\/span> free trade by subsidizing foreign manufacture of goods.<\/p>\n<p>He also <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">has<\/span> to know that the <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2009\/06\/wto-says-environmental-tarriffs-legal.html\">WTO just signed off on these tariffs as legal<\/a>, so long as they are not, &#8220;a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade&#8221;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He expresses these &#8220;concerns&#8221; because he believes that <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">any<\/span> restriction on the flow of goods and services,<sup>*<\/sup> is dangerous and bad.<\/p>\n<p>He is a free market mousketeer<sup>\u2122<\/sup> who believes that free trade will, inexorably spread democracy throughout the world, raise everyone&#8217;s standard of living, keep ants away from your picnic, and keep your daughter from dating the guy with the tattoos and piercings.<\/p>\n<p>Do not expect meaningful labor or environmental measures as a part of his free trade deals.  They won&#8217;t happen.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Except for IP, where excessive US copyright and patent restrictions must be adopted world wide.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cap and trade barely passes the house, and Barack Obama is wringing his hands about how the tariff against nations with weaker measures, &#8220;At a time when the economy world-wide is still deep in recession, and we&#8217;ve seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,998,1079,1109,1020],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-congress","category-environment","category-ip","category-legislation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}