Is free trade really free? Should the US push for more free trade given its economic, political, envir issues?

Question

Is free trade really free? Should the US push for more free trade given its economic, political, envir issues?

Answer 1

What do you mean by free?

Whether the U.S. should push for more free trade depends on your values. If there weren't both supporters and opponents, it wouldn't be an issue, yet it obviously is.

There are a few elements that everyone agrees on:

1. Free trade does result in more goods and service being provided.

2. The benefits of free trade (or any economic transaction) are not evenly split between the parties: the powerful get more of the benefits. Similarly for the costs of free trade - the powerful tend to pay less of them.

3. Free trade in practice does encourage economic growth and therefore environmental degradation. (Economists would argue that this is not necessarily true, and they may well be right, but historically it has been true and there is no reason to expect that to change.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade