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It doesn't help these days that when you hear a 'free trade agreement' being signed between countries its usually not actual 'free trade'but highly regulated fo

It doesn't help these days that when you hear a 'free trade agreement' being signed between countries its usually not actual 'free trade'but highly regulated for mutual self interest.

ggm 9y ago
highly regulated for mutual self interest This, except in reality, the TPP was highly regulated trade for US self interest, the mutuality was almost completely lost. The economic analysis of the last trade round showed a huge disadvantage to Australia, and I suspect the other participants by structural trade imbalances, and the TPP looked to repeat the outcomes. We have a Pharma Benefits scheme, which excludes US drug companies because they have to stop raping patients with the price model. The TPP planned to lower the wall, for specious "left hand isomer" alternate drugs of no clear benefit, to favour the US view on drug sales: buy our pharma, because we want you to. This is a shallow analysis statement of the position, but a very real view of the outcome: its not free trade, when you bully us over social policy to sell things. The North atlantic trade treaty outcomes the UK will face in brexit will go there too. No british person wants to eat ammonia soaked chicken. The Americans want to sell the british Chicken and other meat loaded with antibiotics which is excluded from the EU. The british want a trade deal more than anything else, and will cave on food standards regarding excess antibiotics and washed chicken meat (the US production methods are so disgusting they can't exclude systematic salmonella risks) for cheap meat, to make brexit "work" and as a result, will lose food security and safety. For what? for the chimera of "free trade"
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I'm not sure I'm following this conversation correctly, but in a sort of Platonic extreme-libertarian understanding of free trade, allowing the sale of this American meat makes sense, because the market is supposed to then decide to avoid American meat. I, personally, certainly do not believe that's the case, but, still, I don't see how this really ties in with the OP's idea that "free trade agreements" aren't really free enough.
  - ggm 9y ago
    Yes, I suspect that an objectively open, but clearly fictive (the basic information asymmetries here aren't going away because US strategic interest is not actually to have a free market) food market, cheap US chicken which might kill you should have some alternates which wind up being a good choice. But, since we won't all have infinite money, or brainpower, or patience, or jobs, we're going to buy that cheap US chicken and hope some other sucker dies. We are going to be told to buy the chicken, and we're going to be told to remove biosecurity laws which limit the sale of tainted chicken, in "the wider public interest" Its not a choice between a mythically fully free market and protectionism: its a choice between a US centric distorted market model, and another economies centric but distorted market model.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Yes, that's a fair argument. I think the guy you're replying to is arguing more for the no-regulation utopia you and I both agree is fictive, though.
emodendroket 9y ago
That doesn't seem to really clash with the author's thesis that "free trade" advocates are not taking their own medicine.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  That's true, but the author's other thesis was that free trade doesn't work. One could also say that no ruler is exactly 12 inches long, but that doesn't prevent them from being useful.
- rvern 9y ago
  Many are not, indeed. But if you care about the truth, you should argue against the best arguments of the strongest advocates. You have to challenge the arguments in the chapter on international trade of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s Modern Principles of Economics, and you have to refute the central point. The New York Times and Hacker News do not require that much.

It doesn't help these days that when you hear a 'free trade agreement' being signed between countries its usually not actual 'free trade'but highly regulated for mutual self interest.

ggm 9y ago

highly regulated for mutual self interest This, except in reality, the TPP was highly regulated trade for US self interest, the mutuality was almost completely lost. The economic analysis of the last trade round showed a huge disadvantage to Australia, and I suspect the other participants by structural trade imbalances, and the TPP looked to repeat the outcomes. We have a Pharma Benefits scheme, which excludes US drug companies because they have to stop raping patients with the price model. The TPP planned to lower the wall, for specious "left hand isomer" alternate drugs of no clear benefit, to favour the US view on drug sales: buy our pharma, because we want you to. This is a shallow analysis statement of the position, but a very real view of the outcome: its not free trade, when you bully us over social policy to sell things. The North atlantic trade treaty outcomes the UK will face in brexit will go there too. No british person wants to eat ammonia soaked chicken. The Americans want to sell the british Chicken and other meat loaded with antibiotics which is excluded from the EU. The british want a trade deal more than anything else, and will cave on food standards regarding excess antibiotics and washed chicken meat (the US production methods are so disgusting they can't exclude systematic salmonella risks) for cheap meat, to make brexit "work" and as a result, will lose food security and safety. For what? for the chimera of "free trade"

emodendroket 9y ago
I'm not sure I'm following this conversation correctly, but in a sort of Platonic extreme-libertarian understanding of free trade, allowing the sale of this American meat makes sense, because the market is supposed to then decide to avoid American meat. I, personally, certainly do not believe that's the case, but, still, I don't see how this really ties in with the OP's idea that "free trade agreements" aren't really free enough.
- ggm 9y ago
  Yes, I suspect that an objectively open, but clearly fictive (the basic information asymmetries here aren't going away because US strategic interest is not actually to have a free market) food market, cheap US chicken which might kill you should have some alternates which wind up being a good choice. But, since we won't all have infinite money, or brainpower, or patience, or jobs, we're going to buy that cheap US chicken and hope some other sucker dies. We are going to be told to buy the chicken, and we're going to be told to remove biosecurity laws which limit the sale of tainted chicken, in "the wider public interest" Its not a choice between a mythically fully free market and protectionism: its a choice between a US centric distorted market model, and another economies centric but distorted market model.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Yes, that's a fair argument. I think the guy you're replying to is arguing more for the no-regulation utopia you and I both agree is fictive, though.

emodendroket 9y ago

That doesn't seem to really clash with the author's thesis that "free trade" advocates are not taking their own medicine.

WalterBright 9y ago
That's true, but the author's other thesis was that free trade doesn't work. One could also say that no ruler is exactly 12 inches long, but that doesn't prevent them from being useful.
rvern 9y ago
Many are not, indeed. But if you care about the truth, you should argue against the best arguments of the strongest advocates. You have to challenge the arguments in the chapter on international trade of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s Modern Principles of Economics, and you have to refute the central point. The New York Times and Hacker News do not require that much.