Bush, Kerry and trade

The Washington Times ^ | October 16, 2004 | Editorial

[expat_panama]

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Bush, Kerry and trade

Published October 16, 2004

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President Bush has presided over a calibrated and ambitious trade policy that has been geared towards opening new markets around the world for U.S. producers while defending U.S. industry from unfair trade practices abroad. Mr. Bush's trade representative, Robert Zoellick, has proven to be an agile negotiator in and main driver of global trade talks.
    By contrast, John Kerry has articulated a trade agenda which endangers the ongoing round of trade negotiations. His call for reevaluating existing trade deals could alienate U.S. allies and undermine U.S. foreign policy. In fact, Mr. Kerry's campaign platform on trade also conflicts with his own voting record, which has been unmistakably pro-free trade.
    Under Mr. Bush, the United States has completed free-trade agreements with 12 countries and is negotiating deals with 10 others. Altogether those deals comprise the third-largest U.S. export market, demonstrating the cumulative importance of smaller trade agreements. Those deals cover areas of special importance to U.S. industry, such as intellectual property and the service sector, and include transparency and anti-corruption provisions. The trade agreements include penalties for countries that fail to uphold their own labor and environmental laws.
   

[expat_panama]

This may explain why all there's been so much campaining for Kerry here on these threads.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

"By contrast, Mr. Kerry is putting those talks in jeopardy by calling on the United States to reject an agreement from the last round of global talks to relax quotas on textile trade next year, even though he voted in favor of the terms of that trade round in 1994. Mr. Kerry has called for a 120-day review of NAFTA and other existing trade agreements, even though he voted for NAFTA and every major trade expansion legislation of the past two decades."

[expat_panama]

Seems like the protectors have been like McCain on lately.   The threads have been at best luke warm.

[Willie Green]

President Bush has presided over a calibrated and ambitious trade policy that has been geared towards opening new markets around the world for U.S. producers while defending U.S. industry from unfair trade practices abroad.

Nonsense.
President Bush has presided over a calibrated and ambitious trade WAR that has been geared toward undermining our domestic industries and the economic prosperity and stability of the American Middle Class. He and his rogue band of transnational corporate taliban view America simply as a consumer market to plunder, and a workforce to downsize and outsource; draining the coffers of the national Treasury in the process, leaving future taxpayers buried in debt.

Bush Economic Polices Threaten National Security

[sixmil]

Jeez, I thought only the left wrote puff pieces like this.