Rob Viglione

Protectionism: Playing With Fire

There are certainly many serious issues to consider with unfair trade practices. I am not aware of a single country that has fully free enterprise and trade policies. Everyone subsidizes its favorite industries and uses tariffs, dumping laws,and other market distorting policies to gain advantage for select groups within their jurisdiction.

None of this is good, but it cannot be ignored during trade negotiations. America is, and has been, guilt of some of the worst protectionism and distorting policies. Yet we demand everyone else plays by the rules of free trade.

Free trade is fundamentally a good thing. Trade between households, villages, towns, cities, states, and countries are all good for the same exact reasons. The world's current trade environment is relatively open, but highly distorted and cannot be called free or fair.

Whatever policies our government pursues going forward should acknowledge the value of free and fair trade (which are one and the same thing), and drive the world in that direction, at least for those countries that want to participate.