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Free trade is the default. It has to deliberately made otherwise. Restricted trade serves only special interests and since the world is gradually trying to mo
by ewanmcteagle 17y ago
Free trade is the default. It has to deliberately made otherwise. Restricted trade serves only special interests and since the world is gradually trying to move towards undoing trade restrictions I don't see why this is a good argument.
- 9oliYQjP 17y agoI'm not disagreeing with you, however free trade is most certainly not a default as far as the law is concerned. As such, intellectual property is for all practical purposes being treated entirely inconsistent with real property in this manner. EDIT: FYI here is the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule in delimited format (2.0 MB) http://www.usitc.gov/publications/docs/tata/hts/bychapter/0910_HTS_delimited.txt http://www.usitc.gov/publications/docs/tata/hts/bychapter/09... to give a sense of the sort of wire-ranging tariffs that exist on real goods imported to the U.S.
- 9oliYQjP 17y agoI wouldn't normally whine, but why is this comment being downmodded? It's largely a factual observation. In fact, the parent of the comment above is arguably incorrect in that countries have recently been imposing protectionist measures. Notably, the "Buy American" clause of the stimulus package has resulted in terribly protectionist measures. Countries that do trade with the U.S. have responded in kind with protectionist measures of their own. While it's true that the world was moving toward freer trade, I don't think you can say that this is the case today in the presence of so much evidence to the contrary.