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Free Trade During Americas Interest

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Free trade in Americas interest

“No nation was ever ruined by trade,” stated Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century. Franklin 's maxim is just as true today as it was in the 18th century in that trade is enriching nearly all nations today. In the past ten years free trade has done more to alleviate poverty than any well-intentioned law, regulation, or social policy in history. Even the United States benefits from opening its markets to free trade.
Two epochal forces are sweeping the world today: the spread of new technology and the spread of free markets. Their combined effect has been to let capital, labor, and production move more freely across borders. This freedom of movement has allowed for a more efficient allocation of …show more content…

They permit us to reach out to states as varied as South Africa and India and to engage our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere in a shared interest in economic prosperity.
The pro free-trade camp in this country has tried to sell free trade generally, and the WTO in particular, on the grounds that free trade in other countries is a good idea. When other countries drop their trade barriers, American companies export more, and consequently create more export-related jobs. All true enough, but what free-traders fail to talk about, and their silence is deafening, is that free trade in the United States is a good idea.
Proponents of free trade have remained silent in the face of anti-trade claims about job losses and a "race to the bottom." They have allowed misplaced fears about globalization to spread by default. Trumpeting the prospect of increased exports by U.S. multinationals simply isn 't responsive to those fears; indeed, it actually plays to suspicions that the WTO is a front for big corporations that seek to profit at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Many people favor freer trade, freer markets in general - not only in international trade but in all kinds of areas - because individuals are considered to be better in making decisions about what they want, how much they 're prepared to pay for it, how they 're going to use their own resources. Individuals are considered to be better at making these kind of decisions than governments, unions,

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