When Harry mugged Barry

Harry Reid threatens to impoverish the world by at least $600 billion a year

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This comment was not about free trade; it was about separation of powers. Even though Reid is not inclined to support trade deals, he has brought many while Leader to the Senate floor and they have passed. This comment was about the fact that the Commerce Clause in the Constitution grants Congress the right to regulate commerce with foreign nations and not the President. This is truly a fight about who holds that power.


Obama is not in favour of freer trade. He is an isolationist socialist.

However, the US Canada free trade deal helped both countries and the North American free trade deal also helped all three countries.


Free Trade is great. Unfortunately, TPP isn't about Free Trade so much as it is about certain powerful corporations and industries using Government power to secure advantages for themselves, at the expense of business which lack access to that power, and perhaps at the expense of the public in general. Or at least there's a risk that's what it's about. We can't know for sure, it's secret. If these trade agreements are good for the public, they ought to be able to withstand the public at least knowing their contents. If they have to be kept secret, it's reasonable to assume they have something harmful to hide.

By denying Fast Track Authority, the Senate is not killing trade agreements, it's promoting transparency in government. In the current political climate, transparency is about the only thing all sides can agree upon.

Samuel Lewis Reich

The US government has not in past protected industries with with large high pay high skill payrolls. Instead protected industries (farming) with low pay pay rolls and small or payrolls. Economists aid this looking at money not jobs in trade.

True free world trade would be a kill workers in high pay nations and those nation's economy. What is needed is smart for US trade bills. Exporting the industries that do not pay will or do not have much workers and importing other industries.

Also in world of very uneven pay and education. Loser in trade nations must be allowed to grow export industries, by education, tax benefits and subsidies. A nation cannot import without exporting without going broke. The trade rules in place now does not see a difference between loser and winner in trade nations.


A very slanted article. The "Trans-Pacific Partnership" is not primarily about free trade, it is about protecting monopolies of large corporations, especially large publishing corporations.

These corporations have already hijacked copyright law in the United States. Originally intended to benefit authors, the term of validity of a copyright has been extended again and again and is now "lifetime of the author plus 70 years". Don't tell me that an author benefits by a copyright that lasts until not only the author, but also all his/her children, are dead. This benefits only the large publishing corporations that lobbied for it, and impoverishes everyone else.
The TPA is a bold attempt to export US abuses of copyright to the rest of the world. It's in all our interests that it be torpedoed.

Kurt Lessing

I say Roquefort, you say chlorated chicken
I say nature, you say fracking.
I say Cannes, you say Hollywood.
Let's call the whole thing off.

Giant Tortoise iawmaij

So it is a new fad to use the F word - as officially approved by the State Department. Now let me join the fad as well.

F**k the Protectionalist. And no, I am not a Republican.


I am a solid Democrat (the sort modern Republicans would call a socialist)... But what the F*** are these protectionist imbeciles doing? Why am I finding myself agreeing with the Republicans???

The tagline to the article couldn't be more accurate - Mr. Reid robs the world of $600 billion. What an ass hole.

Thanks for calling him out, TE.

WT Economist

"The aim is “to protect our workers, protect our environment and open new markets to new goods stamped ‘Made in the USA’,” he said; without mentioning that cheap imports raise living standards."

Only in the short run, if they are funded by debt rather than paid for with exports in return.

Someone needs to modify the theory of comparative advantage to account for the possibility of consumption funded by debts, which leave debt payments but no assets to fund them behind.

The United States is hardly the first country to get into this situation. In plenty of poorer countries trade has been luxuries imported for the elite and debt imposed on the country at large to pay for it. The U.S. has gone banana republic.

WT Economist in reply to WT Economist

I would say further, I don't want to hear about trade from anyone who has ever run a balance on their credit card, or has been content to have the government run up a debt on the collective credit card over the business cycle.

It is those debts that allowed trade to get out of balance, and slashed the future living standards of the next generation of Americans and many current Americans themselves.

I ask you, what's your personal trade gap?

Sense Seeker

Granted, openness in negotiations makes things difficult, but these multilateral trade agreements are opaque and undemocratic and potentially very damaging for public health and the environment.

As it is currently negotiated, the TPPA is good for big international corporations and bad for national sovereignty and democracy. In the past, such trade agreements with the US have worsened diets and increased obesity rates. More heavily-sugared Coca Cola, more confectioary, more fast food - hence more obesity.

The TPPA threatens to go further by enabling foreign investors to bring claims directly under the dispute settlement mechanisms, which means that disputes are resolved at the international level rather than in domestic courts or in accordance with domestic law.

Philip Morris is suing Australia with regards to its 'plain packaging' laws, based on a trade agreement with Hong Kong. Big corporations practically make up the US delegation in the TPPA negotiations, and they push for expansion of such 'investor protection', which may make it impossible for countries to limit advertising and sales for obesogenic foods, for example.

Trade agreements can be good, but not if they damage public health or the environment. The current secretive negotiations have to be opened up to public scrutiny. In the current situation, vested interests have way too much influence.


Stavros Saripanidis

It is sad to see that sinking popularity politicians are trying to undermine such an important free trade agreement.

French Socialists on one side, versus election frenzy Congressmen on the other side.

Andrew Oliver

I do not agree at all!!!!

Most bilateral trade deals are not in fact free trade deals. Most recent bilateral trade deals have been in support of intellectual property rights monopolists.

One might think that monopolies got the flick when James I signed in 1624 "An Act concerning monopolies and dispensations with penal laws and forfeiture thereof." However, in the second half of the twentieth century the rich began to lobby for the "limited" to be removed from the very concept of monopoly.

Unlimited copyrights and patents till the end-of-time perhaps one or two billion years is a recipe for hampering technological and cultural innovation!!!!

Whilst I support unlimited moral rights provisions, this TPP non-free-trade pro-monopoly agreement has to be thrown in the rubbish bin!! Senator Reid was just adoing the right thing!

Whither trade agreements? Why not resolve steelily to only support worldwide United Nations endorsed FREE TRADE DEALS! Not this try-it-on monopolism by the billionaires and billion dollar corporates!

I would have thought The Economist would support limitations on monopolies; perhaps the traditional fifty year limit inspired by Leviticus 25? Even if merely in the name of economic and industrial development?


Maybe Mr. Reid just wants to insert a bit of morality into the deal. Maintaining environmental regulations so that in saving $.15 on a T-shirt we don't give up our clean air and water is quite moral and isn't protectionism, at least not in the classic economic sense. The "$200 billion" flowing to the US isn't flowing to me or my neighborhood, or to the people in West Virginia. It's flowing to the oligarchs running the country. I'm happy to pay an extra $.15 cents for the t-shirt and keep my clean air and water, thank you very much.


I'm awfully sorry, but this reporting is no better than the sensationalized local paper I used to get back home. No where in this article does it analyze why Mr. Reid might want to put road blocks on the president. It also scarcely analyzes the positives (and doesn't touch the negatives) of the Japanese or European trade deal which the article's author seems to be supporting. I'm personally inclined to believe that Mr. Reid is an back-stabbing politician who would put party before people any day. But this article puts his position in a decidedly unfair light.

The Economist has written many other articles about the details of these deals and various pros/cons. This article is not about that; it is about Congress granting Obama permission to negotiate in good faith.

Also, even as a democrat, I don't care what Reid's objections are because I'm sick of this party's protectionist BS. It's not gonna be valid.

Paul Marks

Free trade is one of the central principles of economics.

This the great liberal (Classical liberal) American economist A.L. Perry understood just as well as British and French Classical economists (such as Bastiat and the Say family). And this tradition of understanding of free trade was carried on into the 20th century by such economists as Frank Fetter and Ludwig Von Mises.

The idea that free trade is only good if other nations cripple themselves with union power (union power which increase unemployment - not improve long term living standards) and regulations is absurd.

As for the idea that free trade only benefits rich people (turning on its head the classical understanding of how Protectionism helps special interests - often wealthy ones) is another absurdity.

At least Mr Hamilton (and the other American Protectionists) never pretended they were helping the poor - on the contrary they admitted they were helping the most wealthy people in the nation (what they never openly admitted was that this was at the expense of the poor).

Not even Karl Marx supported Protectionism. Those people who think they are being "Progressive" and "modern" by supporting taxes and quotas on imports are really just repeating the fallacies of Fascism - such as Latin American Peronism.

Just as printing more money does not really make people richer (contrary to the fallacies of Keynesianism - which General Peron fanatically followed), nor does taxes on good and services sold from people in other countries to people in one's own country.

On the contrary such policies make things worse (not better) than they otherwise would be.

Puntmeister in reply to Paul Marks

I agree with some of your points, and come down on the side of free trade. However, one does have to consider some of the dynamics:

Some of the cost to manufacture goods and services arise from regulations related to environmental protections, for instance.

If a country requires its manufacturers to use certain techniques, which are costlier, but cleaner, the cost of the finished product will go up.

If the same country then allows foreign manufacturers completely free trade access to its markets, and the foreign countries do not require its manufacturers to use the same expensive, clean techniques, then the domestic manufacturer is unduly harmed.

To be clear, free-trade is good in the sense it maximizes competition - the idea is, the most competitive manufacturer wins. This is good for humanity.

But, in my example, foreign manufacturers don't win by being more competitive - they win because they don't have to follow the same rules.

Now - if you don't give an F about the environment, and want there to be zero government regulation of any kind to begin with - then, yes, free-trade is always a good thing.

Paul Marks in reply to Puntmeister

I believe that the best way to protect the environment (either in the United States or elsewhere) is by the institution of long term private property (and protection of property rights in air and water supplies). However, you are correct (and I have to admit that you are correct) that a short term obsessed regime (such as China) may pollute air and water supplies (denying any property rights in air and water) as part of a fanatical effort to increase exports at any cost. There is no ideal solution in dealing with such a regime.

Paul Marks wrote "you are correct (and I have to admit that you are correct)."

Puntmeister is not correct.

Environmental protection and economic development are domestic public policy decisions, and cost-benefit analyses are a part of those decisions. Puntmeister seems to argue the United States government should use trade agreements to impose its environmental policy decisions on its trading partners in order to offset the competitive disadvantages to domestic producers that arise from its policy decisions. But where does Puntmeister draw the line on American policy imperialism? Does he think America should force its trading partners to adopt a US$7.25/hour minimum wage? Or a 35 percent marginal tax rate on global income of domestic corporations?

Free trade respects the sovereignty of trading partners as well as benefits consumers in the free trade area. "Fair" trade does neither.

I apologise for my error of writing. I meant correct in the sense that some regimes (such as the Chinese) ignore (void) property rights in air and water in order to maximise short term exports (ignoring the long term costs of polluting air and water supplies).

I never suggested any policy for dealing with this problem - because I do not believe any policy is going to be a good idea. Some regimes do bad things - and sometimes (as in this case) efforts to stop them are likely to backfire.


"With corporate profits looking healthy and wages still stagnant almost five years into the recovery, some may be tempted to portray Republican backing for free trade as support for fat-cat corporations." Oh please! We're supposed to get excited about the prospect of another 7.2% reduction in the price of a $4.00 T-shirt at Walmarts? Really? When the vast majority of the gains of previous trade agreements have gone to the likes of the Koch Brothers? Who then used their profits to support politicians who cut unemployment benefits and food stamps for people who lost their job? You're trying to convince workers and voters who were promised "re-training and re-location assistance" last time around (Nafta), and then found that the politicians reneged on those promises, to fall for the same empty promises yet again? Why?


As the article states at the end, President Obama and other supporters have to make a good argument for why these trade deals will help America's economy (and more importantly its average citizen). It is not enough to blindly promote the idea that any free trade agreement is great regardless of the details. For example, negotiating environmental and labor standards is not synonymous with protectionism; it is what I would call human decency. TE can't pretend to care about all those dead people in Bangladesh slaving away to make the shirts people buy at Target and then hypocritically rail against efforts to insert protective and verifiable measures into FTAs.



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