Protectionist Love Child of the Labor Left and the Nationalist Right

Daniel J. IkensonPresident Trump famously called the North American Free Trade Agreement “the worst trade deal ever made.” Bygones. The need to debate that claim has been mooted by the fact that NAFTA’s likely successor—the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement—now holds that distinction.There ’s a reason that neither “Free” nor “Trade” appears in the agreement’s name. There isn’t much of any new trade liberalization in the deal. Then again, an agreement pursued with import reduction and supply chain repatriation as its main objectives was never going to be an exemplar of en lightened trade policy.Instead, the deal reflects the shared objectives of the administration ’s economic nationalists and Congress’s labor left, which were to strengthen the enforcement provisions and discourage companies from investing and operating factories in Mexico. These inducements come by way of the agreement’s streamlined labor and environmental provisions, onerous “rules o f origin” requirements, unorthodox “sunset” provision, and the scaling back of investment and intellectual property protections.To be sure, free trade and free trade agreements are very different animals. Free trade is an economic ideal and is a condition characterized by the absence of trade barriers. Free trade agreements are political creations built atop mercantilist fallacies and are not about “free trade,” per se. These deals include rules that simultaneously liberalize, divert,...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs