Sunday, November 14, 2010

Free-trade Theatre

People, we have met the enemy, and he is us. Only in the wonderland world of Democratic party politics can a President visit a country with which we ALREADY HAVE A SIGNED FTA and come out saying that he failed to reach a trade deal!

At first I thought I'd started down the road to dementia or insanity: "no deal? Wow, I thought we signed one back in 2007, I must be losing my mind".

Well, some people have, and I don't think I'm one of them (at least not in this case!).

Obama travels the earth proclaiming we are going to double our exports, but refuses to push for Congressional action on already signed FTAs that on balance open foreign markets more to us than ours to the other country.

I guess that vaguely positive double-talk about the benefits of trade is better than the "renegotiate NAFTA" rhetoric that came from candidate Obama, but it is still pathetic.


1 comment:

John Thacker said...

Another nice fact about this is that apparently the major sticking point is that Korea's tough new-CAFE-like emissions and mileage requirements are thought to be implemented in a way that's unfair to imports

Not that that's different from our own policy. But when the ROK does it, we insist that they change it.