I STAND CORRECTED

Bilateral deals no threat to global trade (Daniel Griswold, July 27 2003, Financial Times)

The belated efforts of the US to sign bilateral agreements with Chile, Singapore and a few other small partners threaten, we are told, to destroy the entire trading system. A "selfish hegemon", as Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya call it (Bilateral trade treaties are a sham, FT, July 14), is conspiring with special interests to distort the global system. Such arguments themselves distort reality.

To begin, the US is hardly treading on new ground. The multilateral system makes room for free-trade areas through Article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The World Trade Organisation's charter allows customs unions or free-trade agreements between members, recognising "the desirability of increasing freedom of trade by the development, through voluntary agreements, of closer integration between the economies of [those] countries". More than 250 such agreements have been negotiated; if the Chile and Singapore agreements become law, the US will be party to exactly five.

Beyond their economic impact, free-trade agreements of the sort the US is pursuing can benefit the parties involved, the global trading system, and the world at large in many ways.

Here's someone from the Cato Institute acknowledging, though grudgingly, the worthiness of the Administration's free trade efforts and never once mentioning steel tariffs. Maybe there's hope for the libertarians after all. Now, if the Buchanacons can just get over Ted Kennedy supporting No Child Left Behind... Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2003 10:41 AM