One More from MoJo

Robert Zoellick's strange notion of "free trade"
Bradford Plummer, MoJo Blog
Over the weekend, George Will talked to U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick, and decided that trade policy under the Bush administration has been just wonderful:

"Zoellick, the man Kerry slandered, is President Bush's trade representative, and
on one day last month in Geneva he did more discernible good for his country
than Kerry has done in 20 years in the Senate.
On July 31, the World Trade Organization reached an agreement that the industrialized countries -- especially the United States, members of the European Union and Japan -- will eliminate their agriculture export subsidies, which inhibit and distort trade, and will make "substantial reductions" in domestic farm supports, starting with a 20 percent cut. Poor countries will make similar cuts."

Will suggests that the agricultural agreement was a case of free trade at its finest. (This prompted Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect to wonder: "George Will: Liar or Moron?") What gave him that idea? As currently devised, the agreement will leave untouched a wide swath of U.S. farm subsidies. And that ignores the fact that as soon as the dollar declines -- an inevitable event, given our trade deficit -- our agricultural products will be even cheaper than they are now. Meanwhile, the small gains from the farm agreement pale besides the real harm done by Zoellick's cynical push for extending U.S. patents and copyrights. As free trade triumphs go, this is pretty watery fare.
Zoellick, it's been noted, is more mercantilist than free-trader, bent on enhancing the U.S. trade position at the expense of other nations. This is the same man, after all, who uses trade agreements to bully other countries on security issues; who pushed for harmful steel protections to help Republicans in the 2002 midterm elections; and who never saw a shrimp tariff he couldn't stomach. And George Will thinks John Kerry is the one with the protectionist problem?
- Bradford Plumer