Tag: free trade

Action: Tell the candidates, No More Toxic Toys!

Today Public Citizen released a new report “Santa’s Sweatshop ‘Made in DC’ by Bad Trade Deals”. According to the report toy safety problems have skyrocketed as major U.S. toy corporations relocated their production overseas to exploit sweatshop wages in countries where they cannot ensure the safety of the products.  Thankfully the good folks at Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch has put together a easy to use petition to the presidental candidates that simply says this:

Our current imported toy safety crisis is a symptom of race-to-the-bottom globalization. We need new trade policies that protect our kids and support strong consumer safety protections – not trade deals like NAFTA and WTO that promote the relocation of toy production overseas to venues where safety cannot be ensured.

The U.S. President has the power to ensure U.S. trade policy doesn’t undermine the safety of children at play. Urge the candidates to oppose provisions in trade deals that provide special benefits and protections for manufacturers to produce goods in other countries and limit U.S. border inspection and imported product safety standards. Also urge the candidates to provide greater funding for domestic agencies responsible for product safety.

That sound sensible to you? Join me below the fold to learn more about the issue and how to take action.

Globalization, Trade And NAFTA: A Defense of Trade Agreements

Free trade is good. Does anyone disagree? Even “fair traders” agree today. We do not hear about nakedly protectionist domestic content legislation anymore. The “fair traders” argue instead for the need for a “fair playing field” on issues like environmental and labor standards.

But is this new emphasis on equal labor and environmental standards really about anything but protectionism? Is there really an expectation of that countries like Peru, Mexico and the Central American countries (not to mention China and India) will meet US labor and environmental standards? the irony is of course that this would be a form of erstwhile globalization – an attempt to impost US standards on the Thrid World – if it were sincere. It is not. It is just a new way of defending an old idea – protectionism.

I think the evidence of this is obvious – in no other context do we see a drive for higher labor and environmental standards in the Third World. Consider the issue of climate change:

. . . George Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto treaty, which requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012. The US president says Kyoto unfairly burdens rich countries while exempting developing ones such as China and India.

Developing nations say rich states built up their economies without emissions restraints and argue that less-developed countries should have the same opportunity to establish their economies now.

But as emissions from places such as China and India grow, environmentalists say action by the developed world alone will not be enough to stop the warming trend.

Does anyone think George Bush shares the concern of environmentalists on this? Or is it an excuse? And does anyone really think Mexico, Peru and the Central American countries are comparable to China and India on this? Of course not. This is pretext for protextionism.

More.

Economic Update – The Sky is NOT Falling

—————-

Your humble sleep-deprived author is back to offer a counterpoint yet again to some of the ongoing analysis we see in lefty blergsville.

Two points continue to appear on the radar:

1) Our trade policies suck. Too many left-leaning financial types have bought into the myth that ‘Free Trade is Both Inevitable and Good’.
2) The lower value for the US Dollar is not the end of the world. At least not for those of us who live and work here.

Updates on both below the fold…

Load more