Dean Must Be Stopped

From The Washington Post:

One multilateral institution that might not fare so well in a Dean administration, though, is the World Trade Organization. In what would be a radical departure, China and other countries could get trade deals with the United States only if they adopted “the same labor laws and labor standards and environmental standards” as the United States. Whether or not that demand was consistent with WTO rules? “That’s right.” With no concession to their relative level of development? “Why should there be? They have the right to have a middle class same as everyone else.”

Dean says, “We’ve tried it” — NAFTA, WTO — “for 10 years, and has it succeeded? No. . . . What’s the purpose of trade? If it’s to create jobs, we haven’t done that in America.”

No serious candidate can have such wrongheaded ideas about trade. This is the problem that those of us with a knowledge of and interest in trade face every day…fools not understanding margins. On top of that, he misunderstands the purpose of trade (to increase total surplus, not generate jobs) and cannot seem to grasp basic concepts in developmental economics. Vote Howard Dean, have America on the road to European-style success in no time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2003 at 22:32 by Timothy and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.