The Missing Trade

Tim Lee delves deeper into the myseriously low proportion of trade in the text of the US-Colombia trade deal. This has, of course, become utterly typical. I wish people were more aware of this reality. Some of these deals may be good for America, others may be bad, and yet others (like this one) probably just won't make much of a difference either way. But however you want to argue the merits of any particular deal, reference to a trade model out of an economics textbook is neither here nor there.

Dan Drezner explains that the deal is really about cementing the US-Colombian bilateral relationship. Maybe so. I would just observe that free traders spend a lot of time rending garments over the alleged ignorance of their protectionist adversaries but seem to have remarkably little time for self-scrutiny about all the dishonesty and funny-business that goes into the forming and passing of these agreements. As I wrote initially, I'm all for lowering American barriers to imported goods, but it's hard for me to see an agreement like this one as particularly germane to that issue.

Comments

Hmmm. It may be about the oil.

The Clinton Administration launched a "War on Drugs" in Columbia that really seemed to be a "War on the little fuckers who keep blowing up Occidental Oil's pipeline". As I recall ,the herbicide seemed to have a habit of landing on the Uribe Tribe --who were raising a ruckus at the UN about Occidental's invasion of their pristine rain forest. On the actual cocaine farms --er, not so much.

Which obviously put Al Gore in a bind-- given his shares of Occidental. The Hamlet-like tug between moral principle and financial principal reduced Sweet Al to a mute.

Joe Lieberman, by contrast , was a hearty proponent. Oddly enough the "War" consisted of giving the Colombian government a number of expensive Sikorsky Helicopters -- made, by the merest coincidence , in Connecticut. The amount of money donated to Lieberman's campaigns is left as an exercise for the reader. Although I'm sure Joe's desire to keep cocaine from destroying the minds of Hartford's elementary school children was the driving factor.

Posted by Don Williams | April 10, 2008 2:44 PM

Correction -- it was the Uwa tribe -- Uribe is the President and Our Man in Bogata.

For more info, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occidental_Petroleum_Corporation#Ca.C3.B1o_Lim.C3.B3n_massacre

Posted by Don Williams | April 10, 2008 2:53 PM

The amount of text devoted to a particular issue in a legal document does not correlate particularly well with the importance of the issue to the parties. So reading the text of the treaty and analyzing how much text is devoted to particular issues is kind of a silly waste of time.

Posted by y81 | April 10, 2008 4:14 PM

The fact that shithead Robert Novak blasted Speaker Pelosi for blocking a vote on the treaty is sufficient evidence that it is bad for the US. Anything that cocksucker Novak is in favor of should be opposed by the liberals. That's automatic.

Posted by SLC | April 10, 2008 5:02 PM

These trade deals are a method of aligning the interests of the elites of those other countries with ours. The pushers of these deals expect to be personally rewarded and they will be. They will be cronies now too. Made men.

The commercial/corporate state runs in parallel with the ever more nominal political state. There is little need anymore to even pretend to be serving some common good. Such justification is no longer necessary since the idea that what is good for 'fee markets' is good for everyone is unchallengeable. It's hardly coincidental that what is good for 'free markets' is good for the political elites but that doesn't mean it is ever questioned.

Posted by rapier | April 10, 2008 5:48 PM

Hey -- is it just me, or is Matt also one of those who rended garments about those of us supposedly dull-headed 'protectionists' who mentioned NAFTA as an example of an agreement which really wasn't much about trade as it was, say, allowing the breaking down of the labor / production process across national borders?

Maybe it's just my imagination.

Posted by El Cid | April 10, 2008 7:38 PM

Who cares? Pelosi demonstrated that she's the one wearing the pants in this relationship, and all the labor union bosses now know she's the ultimate arbiter. It's another clear demonstration that the hierarchical leaders of organized labor can rely on the ones they sponsor in Washington. I'm sure their relieved to learn they haven't been totally forgotten.

Of course, by the terms of the agreement, American workers would have faced lower import barriers into Colombia than Colombian workers face exporting their products to the USA. But this, too, doesn't really matter. We're talking about the careers, power, and influence of good ol' American labor honchos and leading Democrats in Washington, DC.

No jobs are gained in the US if the treaty flounders, which means there's more work for the power-broking unions and Democrats to distribute. No American worker will miss the job he or she might have gained because the treaty failed. And if one is negotiated with the sponsorship of the Dems and organized labor, well, that's the type of goodies to lavish on those who might soon hope for a job -- but not until these have been blackmailed into voting for their supposedly "greatest champions."

Posted by MarkG | April 10, 2008 11:45 PM