Great article.

There are serious problems with current U.S. trade policy. But those problems are for the most part due us calling things ‘free trade’ which are not anything close to free trade. The TTP is 5,000 plus pages, with all sorts of protectionists carve outs for big pharma, textile manufacturers, and various other sectors with savy lobbyists.

Actual free trade could be written on a single 3x5 index card. Even if tariffs were higher, bringing uniformity to them would make the market more efficient (or at least that’s what my laymen’s brain wishes to be so).

The complicated rules are stifling, they prevent startups and add all sorts administrative costs to the big guys.

The other problem with current trade policy (again in my laymen’s brain), is that a trade deficit that would otherwise result in increased foreign investment in the private sector in the U.S. is instead gobbled up by federal debt.

Yea, we get lots of foreign goods — which is good. But, too much foreign investment comes to the U.S. in the form of debt financing for non-sense federal programs (such as the regulatory apparatus for TTP).

I have been thinking about a way to have a meeting of the minds between free trade proponents and those who oppose the current deals. Too many economists advocate for deals like TTP on the grounds that ‘one the whole they enhance free trade,’ despite all the crony nonsense. Too many politicians oppose deals like TTP on the grounds that ‘free trade’ is bad for Americans, despite there being relatively net increase in the freedom of trade under these deals.