From the Archives: Two views on breaking the free-trade policy logjam

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 22, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Two views on breaking the free-trade policy logjam
April 22, 2010 6:35 PM MST

There are three major free-trade agreements pending in Congress: one each with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.

Congressional approval is necessary to implement the agreements, which are intended to reduce tariffs and quotas and smooth the way for the United States to increase its exports to those countries while also allowing the three trading partners to export more products to the United States.

Brink Lindsey, now vice president for research at the Cato Institute in Washington, formerly served as director of that organization’s Center for Trade Policy Studies. He is the author of The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture and, with Daniel Ikenson, Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Law.

Trade Policy in the Mud
Lindsey spoke about the prospect of ratification for the three free-trade agreements when he was in Charlottesville on April 15. He told the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner that “they are all stuck in the mud for the foreseeable future.”

In order to get them out of the mud, Lindsey said, “we would need President Obama to see that his credentials as a multilateralist would be burnished by getting these bills through Congress.” At the moment, he continued, Obama is “not putting pressure on Congress.”

Moreover, Democratic control of Congress “means they are very sensitive to the interests of organized labor, it doesn’t want to move on them. That logjam has to be broken.”

Breaking the Logjam
Lindsey went on to say that “it’s possible now that [since] Obama is well to the left of public opinion and is suffering in the polls as a result,” the president will be “looking for things to make him seem more moderate, make him seem more pro-business, more pro-market”

In other words, Lindsey suggests that “this is one possibility for him to buck the interest groups in his party and push sound trade policy. It’s possible, [but] I’m not holding my breath.”

Would any one of the agreements be more likely than the others to be approved first? Lindsey thinks not. “They’ll all rise or fall together,” he said.

A Candidate’s View
GOP congressional candidate Matthew Berry explained the importance of free trade policy during an interview on April 17.

“We need free trade agreements for two reasons,” Berry said. First, “more American exports mean more American jobs… a billion dollars worth of exports creates about 15,000 American jobs.”

Second, he said, “Trade increases competition, which means lower prices for American consumers, so your dollar goes farther.”

Obama’s Willing Partners
To break the logjam that Lindsey identified, Berry argued that if Republican candidates do well in 2010, President Obama will have “more willing partners in Congress” because even though the President says that he favors ratification, “he hasn’t been willing to expend any political capital to get them ratified.”

Berry concluded that, “if the Republicans could retake Congress, it will be easier for President Obama to put these on the table and [get them] passed.”

Dear Leader, Yes We Can!

No comment is necessary, except for crediting Reason.tv with this great mashup celebrating the best (worst?) of Obama-sycophancy.

This video is also available on YouTube, where it will live on and on and on as a reminder to these children about what their well-meaning but muddle-headed parents made them do. (I've passed this along to some Red Diaper Babies of my acquaintance, to give them a dose of nostalgia.)

Surfing Along the Axis of Evil

The Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's has uncovered the web sites of the remaining members of the Axis of Evil and other sordid types. What Maclean's has found -- in an article entitled "Websites of Evil" -- turns out to be (from the perspective of the web site owners) unintentionally humorous.

Take North Korea, for instance:

If there was one country you'd expect not to have a website, it might be Kim Jong Il's so-called "Hermit Kingdom," North Korea. Then again, Kim could claim to have invented the Internet himself and it wouldn't look out of place at korea-dpr.com. The "brief history" of dear leader's life runs 160 pages; his father's clocks in at 2,161. And the website has a shockingly liberal relationship with facts. For instance, the regional map provided acknowledges the significance of the 38th parallel, as does the "geography" page—but, in boasting 222,209,231 square kilometres of surface area, it seems to be claiming the entire peninsula for the revolution.

In the "business opportunities" section, visitors learn that North Korea "will become in the next years the most important hub for trading in North-East Asia." How will this be accomplished, considering the country's 85th-ranked GDP—149th, per capita? Thanks to the "lowest labour cost in Asia," a "very stable political system, without corruption," and the unbeatable convenience of dealing directly with the government and state-owned corporations. No middlemen!

You can see all this for yourself on one of the periodic tourist junkets organized by the Korean Friendship Association. Undoubtedly the slickest section of the website, it teases the adventuresome traveller with an idyllic panorama of Pyongyang, including a strangely blurred but nevertheless impressive view of the mammoth Ryugyong Hotel. You won't be staying there, however. Conceived as a little slice of Las Vegas on the Taedong River, complete with capitalist decadences like nightclubs, casinos and no fewer than seven rotating restaurants, it is best described nowadays as an empty 105-storey poured concrete shell with a giant crane marooned on top of it. It has been described as "the single most unsettling structure ever erected by the hand of man."

Then there is Iran -- you know, the place that has no homosexuals:

Thousands of miles west, but still along the Axis of Evil, you'll find Iran's surprisingly large English web infrastructure. Parts are almost charming. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's personal site, for example, includes a sample gallery of gifts he's received from visiting dignitaries both domestic and international. An unnamed lawmaker from the city of Neyshabor brought an ornamental pomegranate, while the Indian foreign minister favoured the President with a covered bowl. Both gifts are described as "inorganic."

Those with questions about their faith can send them directly to the Ayatollah [Khameni]...

"If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?" another asks. Depends, says the Ayatollah. "If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a ḥarām intentional breaking fasting."

I guess the Ayatollah Khameni is Iran's answer to "Ask Amy."

Maclean's correspondent Chris Selley looks elsewhere in the Middle East, and then to Latin America, but the results of its explorations are mixed:

The content at Hamas' palestine-info.info, likewise, is of the tenor one would expect from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The "comment" section includes a recent piece by Khalid Amayreh, who compares the Ukrainian Holodomor to what he believes is a looming genocide in Gaza. "Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, as well as the rest of the ruling class in Israel are more or less trying to emulate Lazar Kaganovitch and Genrich Grigorivic Yagoda, another Soviet Jewish mass murderer who probably killed or caused the death of more people than Hitler ever did," he writes. "We must mobilize … in order to prevent Israel from turning Gaza into another Auschwitz, another Treblinka, another Bergen Belsen, or another Theresienstadt. We must cross all the red lines if necessary."

Despite the freedom of information the Internet offers, however, some sites don't last. The various incarnations of Al Qaeda's web presence have disappeared. And the official website of the Colombian guerrilla organization FARC is also currently inoperative. By some accounts, the site was uncommonly slick for a terrorist organization; its content was certainly spirited. According to the Google cache, the final post, on December 20, called Colombian president Alvaro Uribe a Mafioso, a paramilitary, a buffoon, a vulgarian and a slanderous liar. But while Uribe might well have objected to this characterization, it's unlikely he was behind the website's demise. It was hosted, of all places, in Switzerland—proof, perhaps, that free speech is where you find it.

So the next time you're surfing the web late at night, be sure to leave a comment for Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I'm sure they'll appreciate the thought. You might even get a reply -- if black-hooded thugs knocking down your door at 3:00 a.m. is your idea of a reply.

A Hero Is Coming

It may be hard to believe, but more than 50 years after the war ended, the President of the United States yesterday presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to a hero of the Korean War, Tibor Rubin -- who is also a Holocaust survivor.

The Washington Post reports in this morning's editions:

Rubin was 15 when U.S. soldiers opened the camp at Mauthausen, Austria, and he recalled yesterday that his 14 months there ended with a solemn promise: "I was going to go to the U.S. and join the U.S. Army to show my appreciation. . . . It was my wish to fight alongside them."

More than half a century later, President Bush yesterday bestowed the nation's highest military honor on Rubin, who not only joined the U.S. Army but also saved the lives of dozens of fellow American soldiers during the Korean War. Rubin used his survival skills from the brutal concentration camp to help nurture his U.S. comrades in a communist prisoner-of-war camp in the early 1950s, the White House said, giving hope and sustenance to soldiers who otherwise would likely have died in the custody of Chinese troops.

Yesterday, NPR's "All Things Considered" carried an interview with Rubin -- with warnings of graphic language -- that suggests Rubin's story is worthy of a screenplay, if not a cable-TV miniseries.

Describing his life in a Chinese-run prisoner-of-war camp, NPR's Michele Norris reported:

Food was so scarce that Rubin began to sneak out at night to steal whatever he could find -- barley, millet, animal feed.

Rubin had picked up essential survival skills in the concentration camps. The most important of those lessons, he said, was that the mind could prevail even as the body suffered. He kept his fellow soldiers going through pep talks.

"You just cannot give up," Rubin says he told them. "I don't think the Lord is going to help you; he's only going to help you if you help yourself. You have to try and you have to get home somehow."

More than 1,600 POWs died that winter at Camp 5 in Korea. Rubin's fellow detainees say his actions kept at least 40 prisoners alive. Over the next decades Rubin was nominated several times for service medals, including the Medal of Honor.

But there were always problems with the paperwork. The Pentagon now says that someone in his chain of command may have stymied the process because Rubin was a Hungarian Jew.

But he says that "after 55 years, I never figured I'm going to get it, so I'm very happy."

The Post concludes its report:

Rubin said that he stole food from his captors to feed his sick friends, and that he nurtured the weak through the hardest times. He said he knew that survival was mostly mind over matter, and that he tried to get his fellow soldiers to think positively.

"I tried to brainwash them, telling them they had to stay strong, not to forget their parents, that they have to get home and to not give up," Rubin said. "It wasn't easy on them. For someone that young, it's a nightmare. But I had been through it once, and that's why I came through and helped them.

"My mother used to tell us that we're all brothers and sisters, and in the Jewish religion, if you do a mitzvah -- nothing but a good deed -- that's better than if you go to temple and beat your head and ask the Lord to help you," he said. "I helped people because I could."

Pearl of Africa

Americans who have reached a certain age will remember a radio commentary by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian broadcaster quite well-known in his own country.

In 1973, when the United States was torn apart by the Vietnam War and as the Watergate scandal was emerging as a major impediment to confidence in government, when inflation was swirling and we were on the verge of the first energy crisis, Sinclair reminded the world -- and Americans -- of the good deeds that emanated from this country:

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French, and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971, and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous, and possibly the least-appreciated, people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Well who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did, that's who.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges, and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. And I was there -- I saw that. When distant cities are hit by earthquake, it is the United States that hurries into help, Managua, Nicaragua, is one of the most recent examples.

So far this spring, fifty-nine American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan, the Truman Policy, all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. And now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans.

Sinclair continued:

I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name to me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They'll come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they're entitled to thumb their noses at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians.

Sinclair's commentary swept this country. According to the University of Delaware Library,

This address was so popular that it was inserted into the Congressional Record 23 times in 1973, sometimes with portions deleted or added. It was recorded in 1974 by Byron MacGregor with the title "The Americans: A Canadian's Opinion" and was played on top 40 radio stations. According to The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, it spent 4 weeks at chart position 24, starting 1/26/74. . . . The address has also been printed in the Congressional Record in subsequent years.

Sinclair's commentary came to mind because, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, foreign countries are, in fact, coming to the assistance of Americans.

At a State Department press briefing yesterday, the department's executive secretary, Harry K. Thomas, reported:

95 countries have offered us assistance, close to a billion dollars in cash.* Eleven flights landed yesterday in Little Rock. We expect another 11 today. But our greatest -- the greatest challenge we have is to match the generous offers with the needs of the American people. The last thing we want is someone to offer something that is wonderful, but can't really be utilized. Some countries, for example, Russia, has made offers to us. We haven't refused them, but what we told the Russians was, "We need MREs" and they sent us MREs. We did the same thing with Germany. We took the MREs. The first thing we took, because we're echoing what the President said, but more importantly, it was easiest to manage was cash. And the cash donations came in and quickly went out to Red Cross and others.

Some of the contributions have been huge. South Korea, for instance, which has the third-largest deployment of troops in Iraq in support of the United States and Great Britain, has promised more than $30 million in cash and in-kind assistance. According to the Korea Times in Seoul:

South Korea pledged on Sunday to send $30 million in humanitarian aid to help the United States recover from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

The government will also dispatch 50 rescue workers to assist the evacuation of thousands of people in New Orleans and surrounding areas as part of a government task force led by Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-sik.

The assistance package, which includes emergency relief supplies, was announced following a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan.

"The government will cooperate with the civilian sector and the Red Cross to raise the funds needed for the aid," Lee Kang-jin, spokesman at the Office of the Prime Minister, told reporters.

South Korea is providing the fourth-largest amount of disaster aid, following on pledges of $100 million from three oil-rich Arab states, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. But even far less affluent countries are providing aid:

Other commitments have come from Armenia, Bahamas, Cyprus, Djibouti, Georgia, Hungary, the Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal and the Organization of American States, who are donating sums ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 dollars.

Azerbaijan, Australia, Bahrain, China, Gabon, India, Iraq, Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway and Saudi Arabia groups and Taiwan are down for half a million to 7.6 million dollars.

In fact, one of the countries I work for (in my professional life), Uganda, has pledged $200,000. This news release was distributed this morning by the Ugandan Embassy in Washington:

The government of the Republic of Uganda has pledged $200,000 toward relief and rebuilding efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Ugandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Sam Kutesa said the money will be donated to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, led by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “The Government of Uganda extends its sympathies to the people affected by Hurricane Katrina,” said Minister Kutesa.

“We know that, under the guidance of the two former presidents, money collected by the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund will go where it is needed most and where it can be used best,” said Kutesa, who is in Washington on previously-scheduled business.

President Yoweri Museveni said that “the United States has been generous in responding to natural and humanitarian disasters all over the world, including in Africa. Uganda has more than once been the beneficiary of this generosity, and justice requires us to aid the people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who have lost their homes and loved ones.”

President Museveni added: “We appreciate that, as elder statesmen, Presidents Bush and Clinton are devoting their leadership skills to raising money to help the suffering.”

Minister Kutesa noted that the $200,000 contribution will be transferred to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund immediately.

It took more than 30 years, but Gordon Sinclair's plaintive pleadings are finally being met with a positive response. The sad thing is that such a horrific series of events had to transpire to bring about this result. The ironic thing is, this gave me an unanticipated opportunity to add more Canadian content to this blog -- in addition to news about the Moffatts and Canadian baby names.

North Korea's Nukes

Overheard:

"If the North Koreans use their nuclear weapons on any target, anywhere, the United States should bomb them forward to the Stone Age."