Free Trade Free Fall? Utne Reader

[BridgeTheGap]

Free Trade Free Fall?
Free trade's popularity has nose-dived, but is its political peril enough to stop Congress from approving four new trade agreements?
—By Natalie Hudson, Utne.com


April 11, 2007 Issue

Once considered the bastion of American capitalism, free trade is freefalling out of favor among the public and politicians alike. Whatever waning leverage the Bush administration is clinging to has all but dried up in the Democratic-controlled Congress, many members of which won pushing anti-free trade platforms.

Reporting for Foreign Policy in Focus, Laura Carlsen cites a national NBCNews/Wall Street Journal poll from March showing that 46 percent of people surveyed believe free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have hurt the country. Only 28 percent of those surveyed believe that they helped.

Politicians are apparently aware of the public's skepticism, according to Tom Barry, policy director for the International Relations Center, a New Mexico-based think tank. In a "trade backgrounder" report, Barry writes that "oth political parties are increasingly wary of trade measures that may increase the massive US trade deficit and anger voters tired of seeing US jobs lost to overseas production."

http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2007_294/news/12519-1.html

[kenny blankenship]

1. What's the matter with them? Don't they know that God is pleased

when a job that used to pay an American middle class wage, but was shipped to another country where it payed a poverty wage, is now re-shipped again to another, more distant country to pay a starvation wage?

Don't these voters, politicos, Utne writers and Utne readers want capitalism to thrive and for God to smile down upon its continually improving bottom line?