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| Posted by: Perm Dude
- [27639309] Wed, Jul 30, 2008, 18:01
The WTO's Doha round collapses, mostly (it seems to me) as a result of US protectionism infused in the last farm bill.
The Progressive Policy Institute chimes in, including the interesting factoid: No Republican president has concluded a multilateral trade agreement since Dwight Eisenhower oversaw the Geneva II Round of the GATT in 1956.
Pejman Yousefzadeh at RedState.org is simple in his post: This is a disaster, and clears the field for new protectionist trade policies.
Yet another reason, IMO, to do away with the yearly porkfest that is the Farm Bill. |
| | | 1 | Perm Dude
ID: 18351159
Wed, Apr 15, 2009, 12:53
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Not sure where else to put this.
Trade deficits are down (way down)--that's a good thing, right? Maybe not.
"Higher imports (and usually, therefore, higher trade deficits) have usually been indicators of falling unemployment, while lower imports and trade deficits [as in 1982, 1991 and 2001] go hand-in-hand with rising unemployment."
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| | | 2 | Boxman
ID: 571114225
Wed, Apr 15, 2009, 20:09
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At the risk of a lurker calling me dishonest then not having the stones to accept a tit-for-tat apology I am going to post here.
Someone explained trade deficits this way to me and its made sense.
Imagine I sell apples and you sell oranges. My apples are $10 a bushel and your oranges are $20 a bushel.
I buy a bushel of oranges from you.
You buy a bushel of apples from me.
I spend $20 on the bushel of oranges.
You spend $10 on the bushel of apples.
I have a $10 trade deficit with you.
You have a $10 trade surplus with me.
Who is worse off? Neither because we both purchased goods of our own free will and are economically satisfied with cost/reward for those goods.
Where things get nuts is when something like outsourcing goes too far and you have no real labor base to earn wages and in turn buy goods without racking up massive debt.
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| | | 3 | Perm Dude
ID: 533361517
Wed, Apr 15, 2009, 21:59
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I'd add: When you add $5 to the cost of imported apples simply because they aren't from your country, or you want to preserve the market for your homegrown (though inferior) apples.
I've been a free trader for a long time.
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| | | 4 | Nerveclinic
Leader
ID: 05047110
Thu, Apr 16, 2009, 03:47
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Box here's a better analogy.
Person A makes 100,000 a year and Person B makes 10,000
Person A buys a new car every year from person B for 110,000. Person B lends him the extra 10,000 to buy the car.
This goes on and on for years and years until person B starts to wonder if he will ever get the money he lent A back.
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