Free Trade Benefits the United States

"If greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, we'll soon reach a tipping point, after which runaway climate change will make the planet uninhabitable to humans." You claim that greenhouse gas emissions usage, if continued at this rate, would like to runaway climate change that would make this planet uninhabitable. I will grant you the argument that greenhouse gas emissions have the potential to make the planet uninhabitable. I disagree with the idea that gas emissions would continue at our current rate. Free Trade is Beneficial to the Environment "Free trade is incompatible with reducing emissions, slowing climate warming, and saving our planet. Under a free trade regime, prices are set solely by supply and demand, so social costs like climate change and environmental damage aren't reflected in a good's price. Economists call these unaccounted social costs an "externality." Free trade is driven by prices, so if prices are wrong due to externalities, free trade will produce bad outcomes." You provide no sources that demonstrate that free trade is incompatible with reducing emissions and slowing global warming. Negative externalities do result from fossil fuel usage in the form of greenhouse gasses and pollution, but that doesn't mean artificially increasing the price of energy consumption to try to make the price "right" would actually benefit society. On the contrary, there is evidence that free trade actually benefits the environment. One study found that "Our estimates of the scale and technique elasticities indicate that, if openness to international markets raises both output and income by 1 percent, pollution concentrations fall by approximately 1 percent. Putting this calculation together with our earlier evidence on composition effects yields a somewhat surprising conclusion with regard to sulfur dioxide: freer trade is good for the environment." http://www.cer.ethz.ch... Free trade would also benefit the environment because it facilitates the spread of more efficient and greener technologies. A World Bank study found that "Access to climate-friendly clean energy technologies is especially important for the fast-growing developing economies. Within the context of the current global trade regime, the study finds that a removal of tariffs and NTBs for four basic clean energy technologies (wind, solar, clean coal, and efficient lighting) in 18 of the high-GHG-emitting developing countries will result in trade gains of up to 13 percent. If translated into emissions reductions, these gains suggest that—even within a small subset of clean energy technologies and for a select group of countries—the impact of trade liberalization could be reasonably substantial." http://www-wds.worldbank.org... "For example, transportation costs." Sure, there are transportation emissions, but the alternative is worse. "A potential solution is a small, uniform tariff for all imports. This would encourage local production, thereby avoiding an enormous amount of wasted energy in transportation. Another idea is a carbon tax; the US could penalize imports of fossil fuels and other harmful energy-intensive industries. This would help discourage greenhouse gas emissions and encourage clean production facilities and renewable energy sources." This proposal to reduce carbon emissions is flawed. First off, tariffs would lead to an inefficient allocation of resources in society due to the loss of comparative advantage. Losing efficiency means more waste and higher emissions from inefficient production. The carbon tax is a regressive tax that burdens poor people the most, would increase the cost of living for everyone, lead to less economic growth, and would not affect oil consumption greatly unless the tax is set enormously high, due to the inelastic demand for oil. The better solution to facilitate the advancement of alternative energy sources is to decrease regulations that prevent business growth, increase free trade to facilitate the expansion of green technologies, and allow the free market to continue developing alternative energy sources. Free trade is not incompatible with the reducing carbon emissions. Free trade will lead to the reduction of carbon emissions. Free trade is Sustainable "Free trade lets the US import more than it exports (i.e. deficit trading). To make up the difference, the US must assume debt. As a result, foreign countries own over $30 trillion in US assets, and the US net international investment position is -$5.445 trillion. [4]" International investment isn't equivalent to free trade. Free trade is the lack of tariffs and barriers in the transaction of goods and services in the economy. Investing involves buying and holding stocks, bonds, and mutual funds to achieve a profit later. Tariffs don't directly apply to US international investment. But while we're on the topic of sustainability, it has been proven time and again that protectionism hurts the economy and is unsustainable. A famous example of protectionism at work is the Smoot-Hawley Bill. The Smoot-Hawley Bill was a bill that drastically increased tariffs to try to protect American works, but it ended up backfiring and hurting out economy. "U.S. imports from Europe declined from a 1929 high of $1,334 million to just $390 million in 1932, while U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and 1934. More generally, Smoot-Hawley did nothing to foster trust and cooperation among nations in either the political or economic realm during a perilous era in international relations." http://future.state.gov... Free trade increases the standards of living of the poor "The Stolper-Samuelson theorem, an underlying mechanism of free-market economics, says that freer trade raises returns to the abundant facctor of production and lowers returns to the scarce once. [11] In the US, the abundant factor is capital and the scarce one is labor. Thus, according to the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, free trade increases economic inequality. [12] [13] The jobs that suffer most are those that are easily traded for cheap labor abroad. This primarily impacts low-skill workers, who either lose their job or get paid less. Of course, that means free trade hurts most Americans, as most American work the sorts of blue-collar jobs that are easily traded. So we're talking about a massive impact here: a minority gets richer (and these are folks who are already rich), while the vast majority gets poorer. " Free trade has overall helped poor Americans. Yes, some types of jobs have been lost, but overall poor Americans are better off with free trade than without. One example is how free trade helps job growth. The Heritage Foundation found that, "Today, the $12 trillion U.S. economy is bolstered by free Trade, a pillar of America's vitality. In 2005, U.S. exports to the rest of the world totaled $1.2 trillion and supported one in five U.S. manufacturing jobs. jobs directly linked to the export of goods pay 13 percent to 18 percent more than other U.S. jobs." Also, "The average U.S. tariff rate on all goods has fallen from over 19 percent in 1933 to 1.8 percent in 2004. As a percentage of GDP, the importance of Trade in the economy has climbed from single digits in the 1930s to nearly one-quarter of U.S. GDP in 2004. At the same time that Trade has become freer, real per capita GDP in the U.S. (in constant 2000 dollars) has climbed from a low of $5,061 in 1933 to about $36,000 in 2004." Average wages have substantially increased for every single income percentile since the start of trade liberalization. Economic inequality may have increased over time, but the free market isn't a zero-sum game. Free trade benefits every that takes part in the market, rich or poor. I'd rather have economic inequality and increased standards of living for the poor, than having everyone be more equal, but poorer. http://www.heritage.org... As I have ran out of time, I will be discussing and defending my arguments for innovation and the gains of trade next round.