Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Now that's a neat trick

President Obama is claiming that he's got the better argument than either Hilliary Clinton or Donald Drumpf regarding the "Trans Pacific Partnership", which is an interesting argument for a very simple reason; nobody outside of the White House, along with the negotiators for other countries, knows what's in it, and that's by law passed by Congress.

Nice try, Mr. President, but when the details aren't out, good luck making your case.  Plus, when typical "free trade" agreements amount to thousands of pages (GATT is something like 22000 pages) and there are several volumes of codes for various items to be imported and exported (I've seen them, they are huge), it's not hard to make the case that there must be a better way.  Say we could list some items (e.g. military and aerospace) as restricted or prohibited, and tax the rest of them at a reasonable rate (say 10% or so) to pay for the Coast Guard, ICE, and Navy. 

And then give a massive tax cut--start with much higher dependent deductions--so that Americans can get back to work.  But I am expecting nothing so sensible as this from the President for a very simple reason; we're still part of NAFTA and GATT.

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