#1977: Re: #1955: Economics of Sugar Industry : Gill comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Mark Gill <markgill@midwest.net>



The US did not become wealthy because of free trade.....anyone who would
say this is doing a misread of US economic history....

The early free traders, such as Adam Smith, promoted free trade, after a
fashion, due to the restrictions imposed under Mercantilism which
dominated his day....

Free Trade theory today began in the l960's and posits that the losses
of the losers will simply be smaller than the gains of the
winners.....thus, an aggregate theory and it often ignores the impact of
lower tariffs on local production....

Further, this set of theories assumes that the winners will compensate
the losers so that everyone in each country has an incentive to move
into free trade....well, you can bet this is strictly an assumption, for
such rarely happens.....

in Haiti, low tariffs means that local producers will be driven out of
business...pure and simple.....this happens all over the
world......why?  as i have said before, free trade has as one its
purposes the lowest price for the consumer.....if a Haitian can buy
cheaper beans from Italy than those produced locally, then, according to
free trade theory, this is "good".....the losers are the producers, the
winners are the consumers.....

well, as i have also stated before, this may "pan out" in a broad based
economy like the US, altho textile workers in the Carolinas dont think
so, for example, but the free trade theories began to look very weak
when applied to third world countries....the literature on this subject
is quite vast.....

mark gill