"Smart Trade"

Former Senator and current Presidential Candidate, John Edwards is advocating what he calls a "smart trade" policy. He opposes trade deals with South American countries and South Korea. He also is in opposition to NAFTA. While he is right to insist that new trade deals include worker protection provisions and are fairly balanced to protect American workers, I believe he is wrong to claim that, "Trade has become a bad word for working Americans for a simple reason: our trade policy has been bad for working Americans."

First, free trade is NOT a bad thing. Isolationist tariffs originating at home and abroad are harmful for both our domestic economy and the developing world. Entire domestic industries at home are being allowed to continue to perform at extremely low levels of efficiency behind the protection of strong tariffs. As a result, American consumers are forced to buy higher priced products when international alternatives are prevented from entering the market at their real price. Of course, we must be sure to demand that countries we trade with adhere to WTO rules and create an environment where our products can compete within their countries against their domestic goods. Thomas Friedman, the author of The World is Flat, sums it up by asserting that free trade will, "increase demand for goods and services, spur innovation, and reduce both unemployment and job migration across the globe."

Sure, globalization has hurt some American families. People has lost their jobs as they have migrated to other nations where workers are willing to do the same tasks for less. Nevertheless, as trade barriers are broken down, more and more markets will be opened for our goods. All in all, while it may be hard for some, free trade is the best answer for our country as a whole. To be sure, as a nation, we must provide for a safety net to catch workers who are adversily affected by our changing economy, though we must not use lost jobs as a pretext for preventing a strategy that will ultimately benefit our nation greatly.