Anti-Trade Democrats
March 3rd, 2008 by Brendan SteinhauserFareed Zakaria has a great piece in this week’s Newsweek magazine. The same piece appeared in today’s Washington Post print edition. He argues that the Democrats’ anti-trade rhetoric is dangerous and causes people around the world to fear a protectionist America. Zakaria is right. As he points out,
The facts about trade have been too well rehearsed to go into them in any great detail, but let me point out that NAFTA has been pivotal in transforming Mexico into a stable democracy with a growing economy. And, in Lawrence Summers’s words, “[it] didn’t cost the United States a penny. It contributed to the strength of our economy because of more exports and because imports helped to reduce inflation.” Trade between the NAFTA countries has boomed since 1993, growing by about $700 billion.
The Democrat candidates should stop pandering to Ohioans (who lost their jobs more to dumb economic policies and the unions) and should tell the truth about NAFTA.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Poor Fareed Zakaria. A decent Conservative thinker, but does he really think it’s a good idea to sell NAFTA to America by pointing out how good it’s been for Mexico?
March 4th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Ah, blame the nasty unions that were fighting for better pay and benefits for their members. Sure, it’s unfortunately easier to just pick up and leave the USA for countries that have little to no labor or environmental regulations.
Look, I’m a liberal that’s a free/fair trader, but saying that Mexico is now a “stable democracy” and that NAFTA “didn’t cost the United States a penny” is just patently false, period. Tell that to the Zapatistas, and how big’s that U.S. trade deficit now?