Whether diversity is a social benefit depends on whether it creates excuses to fight each other for special treatment. Politicizing our differences is far more likely to make diversity a source of conflict.
While the legislation introduced in the US Congress remains fiction under a Republican executive and senate, the Brussels initiative will become law unless there is considerable opposition from EU member states.
So long as governments exist, it is essential that we minimize the ability of groups and individuals to use the power of the state to enrich themselves.
A “free trade agreement” in practice isn’t simply an index card declaring, “Tariffs on Country X are 0 percent, three cheers for Bastiat!” These are managed trade agreements, with hundreds of pages devoted to detailed regulations that smack of top-down Soviet planning.
Some Latin American policymakers seem to think China will offer easy terms for loans and trade agreements. They're wrong. China isn't as rich as many think.
Americans ought to begin thinking of trade between the US and the UK as something comparable to trade between California and Idaho.
Trade agreements have thus become obsolete tokens of negotiation in larger geopolitical disputes, protectionist tools for managing and interfering with global trade flows.
Let the WTO and all its agreements go already! We cannot salvage something that was broken from the start.
EU politicians and technocrats like to present themselves as progressive and enlightened policymakers. But that virtuous mask slipped after German auto giant Volkswagen announced that its new facility would be located in Turkey instead of an EU member nation.
In the second half of the twentieth century, pro-union and anti-trade policies led to a Rust Belt that became uncompetitive, costly, and unable to cope with reality. More protectionism won't save the region now.
