Speech #1020024161

Trade in goods and services. per se. is understood by the uninitiated to be agreements between countries to buy each others products. To those in government. especially elected officials who must answer to constituents. the use of trade treaties for international advantage. either military or economic. becomes difficult to explain. An American worker thrown out of his job by plant closings due to the opening of a free trade zone with Mexico doesnt give a hoot for the problems of illegal immigration from Latin America across the Mexican border. The theory that supplying jobs inside Mexico will discourage illegal immigration sounds much more reasonable inside an airconditioned office in Washington than it sounds as a rationale in a shuttered steel town during an election year. The Keynesian idea of redistribution of wealth through U.S. tax law seems to have been expanded through trade policy to the redistribution of U.S. wealth worldwide. The old Marshall plan idea has undergone some Machiavellian twists.