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- Nash-Hoff 7/5
- The reality is that we don’t really have free trade
- Barbieri 96
Impact Defense: TradeNot reverse causal – skfta might boost free trade but its absence won’t result in total collapse. South Korea isn’t key Carpenter and Bandow 4 (Ted Galen, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies – Cato Institute, and Doug, Senior Fellow – Cato Institute, The Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea, p. 126) America's cultural and economic ties with South Korea are valuable, but not critical. For instance, two-way trade in 2003 exceeded $60 billion (it peaked at almost $67 billion in 2000), real money but small change for Amer ica's $10 trillion economy.26 Moreover, notes Stephen W. Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, "The relative weights of the United States and South Korea in the increasingly global economic interests of the other are shrinking in relative terms."27 SKFTA doesn’t solve trade - VATs Nash-Hoff 7/5/2011 (Michelle has been president of the San Diego Electronics Network, the San Diego Chapter of the Electronics Representatives Association, and The High Technology Foundation. She has 18 years experience in the Manufacturing Industry and is the founder of Electro-Fab Sales. “Should Congress Ratify the Korea Free Trade Agreement?” http://savingusmanufacturing.com/blog/general/should-congress-ratify-the-korea-free-trade-agreement/) This delay is a good time to reconsider whether KORUS and the other pending trade agreements with Panama and Chile should be ratified by Congress. The fundamental dispute is over free trade itself. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush aggressively promoted it, while President Obama promised more protection for American workers in future agreements when he was a candidate. The appeal of free trade has waned amid large U.S. trade deficits and concerns that more American manufacturing jobs will disappear overseas at a time when unemployment remains stuck above nine percent The mistake many people make is lumping free trade, free enterprise, and free markets together, whereas each has its own specific meaning. In simple terms, free trade allows faster and more business between two countries/regions by agreeing to lift tariffs, quotas, special fees and taxes, and other barriers to trade between the two entities. Free enterprise is the freedom a company has to select the headquarters and manufacturing locations to make its product as inexpensively as it can, regardless of where that might be, in order to enjoy continued profitability and remain viable. Of course, a company is subject to the laws of the country in which they are located. A free market is a one in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts, relying on supply and demand. The underlying economic theory of free trade agreements is that of “comparative advantage,” which originated in an 1817 book entitled “On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation” by British political economist David Ricardo. He postulated that in a free marketplace, each country/area will ultimately specialize in that activity where it has comparative advantage; i.e., natural resources, skilled artisans, agriculture-friendly weather, etc. The result should be that all parties to the agreement should increase their income. Unfortunately there are winners and losers if the “comparative advantage” of one country is unequal to the other. Advocates of free trade argue that it is essential to our country’s growth and point out that the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) and other trade agreements have created more than 20 million jobs around the world since their passage. Opponents to free trade argue that the U.S. has lost over six million jobs to offshore countries since 1994 when NAFTA was passed. Furthermore, they make the point that American jobs are not being supported when we buy products that have been made offshore, and that the U.S. should not encourage and even facilitate its corporations to ship jobs out of the country. They believe that manufacturing is the foundation of the U.S. economy and that American jobs must be protected from being outsourced to other countries. The reality is that we don’t really have free trade – we have negotiated trade agreements in which the United States has gotten “the short end of the stick” in most cases. Instead of free trade, I would say that we have “dumb” or “stupid” trade instead of free trade. What we need is “smart” trade. For example, over 150 countries have a value added tax (VAT), and the United States doesn’t have a VAT. A VAT is a tax on consumption – as opposed to income, wealth, property or wages. It is s a tax only on the “value added” to a product, material or service, from an accounting view, at every stage of its manufacture or distribution. VATs are “border adjustable” and average about 17%. This means that virtually all foreign countries tax our exports with their 17% VATs, when our goods cross into their country. While those countries tax their domestic production as well, they rebate their VAT when their companies export. This means that American imports to our trading partners are charged a VAT while we don’t charge a similar VAT on imports of their products to our country. Thus, American companies are victims of unfair competition when trying to penetrate foreign markets. VATs are the biggest trade problem for the U.S. globally. Trade agreements do not address VATs when tariffs are lowered. The WTO allows VATs. During the last 40 years, the U.S. has lowered tariffs, and other countries lowered tariffs. However, other countries implemented and raised their VATs. The net result is that other countries replaced tariffs with VATs, but the U.S. did not. No trade barrier costs us more money. Our exports are double taxed – once in the U.S. and once upon arrival at a foreign country’s shores. Foreign sales to us are partially tax free. No war impact Barbieri 96 (Katherine, Professor of Political Science – University of North Texas, Journal of Peace Research, February, p. 42-43) This study provides little empirical support for the liberal proposition that trade provides a path to interstate peace. Even after controlling for the influence of conti guity, joint democracy, alliance ties, and relative capabilities, the evidence suggests that in most instances trade fails to deter conflict. Instead, extensive economic inter dependence increases the likelihood that dyads engage in militarized dispute; how ever, it appears to have little influence on the incidence of war. The greatest hope for peace appears to arise from symmetrical trading relationships. However, the dampening effect of symmetry is offset by the expansion of interstate linkages. That is, extensive economic linkages, be they sym metrical or asymmetrical, appear to pose the greatest hindrance to peace through trade. Although this article focuses exclusively on the pre-WWII period, elsewhere I provide evidence that the relationships revealed here are also observed in the post WWII period and more extended period, 1870—1985 (Barbieri, 1995). Why do the findings differ from those presented in related studies of the trade—conflict re lationship, which reveal an inverse relation ship between trade and conflict? Several explanations, other than the temporal domain, can be offered. First, researchers differ in the phenomena they seek to explain, with many studies incorporating both conflictual and cooperative interstate behavior (e.g., Gasiorowski, 1986a, b; Gasiorowski & Polachek, 1982; Polachek, 1980, 1992; Polachek & McDonald, 1992). Studies that focus exclusively on extreme forms of conflict behavior, including dis putes and wars, differ in their spatial and temporal domains, their level of analysis, and their measurement of central con structs. Preliminary tests reveal that the composition of dyads in a given sample may have a more dramatic impact on the empiri cal findings than variations in measurement. For example, the decision to focus exclusively on ‘politically relevant dyads’ may be one source of difference (Oneal et al., 19%). Perhaps the primary component missing from this and related research is the inclusion of a more adequate assessment of the costs and benefits derived from interdepen dence. I have repeatedly argued that the conflictual or pacific elements of interdepen dence are directly related to perceptions about trade’s costs and benefits. Yet, a more comprehensive evaluation of these costs and benefits is needed to see whether a link truly exists between the benefits enjoyed in a given trading relationship and the inhibition of conflict in that relationship, or con versely, the presence of net costs for at least one trading partner and the presence of con flict in that relationship. For example, are trading relationships that contain two partners believed to benefit from trade less conflict-prone than those containing at least one partner perceived to be worse off from trade? I have merely outlined the types of relationships believed to confer the greatest benefits, but such benefits and costs require a more rigorous investigation. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.85 Mb. Share with your friends:
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