Reply #15: I don't expect agreement here, but if you look at it, its a good deal all around [View All]

[bhikkhu]

Columbia and Panama have little to export but agricultural products that we can't grow here, and which we already import.

South Korea is a modern country, with standards of living, education and health care similar to our own. Its not a matter of competing against child-labor or slaves.

...and then, generally, you have to look at exactly why free trade has such a bad reputation - and that has to do with its history over the past 30 or 40 years, which has a lot to with US monetary policy. When we have a "strong dollar" policy, our goods are expensive relative to others, while imported goods are inexpensive. That's been the general policy for a very long time, during the whole period in which most of us formed our notions of free trade. It discouraged domestic production, and encouraged overseas manufacturing.

Currently, we have a monetary policy which is the opposite - and we have steady growth in US manufacturing. I know few people here are likely to have heard, but:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/business/economy/us-exports-rise-to-record-as-trade-deficit-shrinks.html

US export levels have been setting records all year, and have been contributing to the (slow) economic growth that we have had. The monetary policy of the Obama administration is largely responsible. A little more free trade, combined with sound monetary policy, is likely to do what the president hopes it will - and give the economy another push in the right direction.