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For or Against Free Trade

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The argument has been made that free trade is the path that should and will be taken to improve the world economy for all. Through it States will be able to better allocate resources, labor, and goods. This sentiment, however, is not shared my all. A major opponent of free trade is Ian Fletcher. His argument against free trade is sound, however through other readings, especially Moonhawk Kim’s on the GATT/WTO, it can be seen that the theory of free trade is still evolving at the international level and that by sticking with it and having States being willing to work with each other it will end up being able to accomplish all that it is theorized to do. The argument has been made that globalization in inevitable and free trade is the …show more content…

Lastly, Fletcher goes through a series of arguments supporters of free trade make in order to show the futility of those against it. It is argued by those for free trade that those against it are stuck in the past, uneducated, that the United States has move past the need for unskilled labor, that large trade debt does not matter as it brings in investments and that offshoring of American jobs is minor and infrequent. To these arguments Fletcher points out that it is a lack of understanding by those in favor of free trade that leads to these myths.
Those against free trade are not stuck in the past or uneducated. Many of them come from small factory towns that are suffering due to the movement of the factories to States with cheaper labor and these lower skilled American workers are left without work. The United States still has a need for low skilled jobs. Then the idea that we can sustain the deficit due to foreign investment is not a correct idea, most go into existing assets and the rest into government debt and not investment. Lastly, the idea that the United States is not losing jobs to offshoring or that is minimal is are not seeing the full picture, nearly forty million American jobs are affected each year due to it.
The argument against globalization and showing the overall issues associated with free trade is not Fletcher’s only approach into showing why free trade is a false concept. In Chapter five, he delves into the theory of

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