This is of particular benefit for lower-income Americans. Their purchases of items such as food and clothing, which carry higher costs when there is import protection, represent a higher level of their spending than it does for upper-income Americans. Lower prices mean a paycheck goes further at the supermarket and the department store. Trade barriers, by contrast, are an invisible tax on what families and businesses buy. Second, as President Bush has stated, free trade is about freedom.
Economic freedom creates habits of liberty, and habits of liberty create expectations of democracy.
President Bush recently made an historic visit to Mexico where he met with President Fox, the first president elected from the opposition since that nation's revolution. Third, expanded trade affects our nation's security. The crises of the first 45 years of the last century were inextricably linked with hostile protectionism and national socialism. Communism could not compete with democratic capitalism because economic and political freedom creates dynamism, competition, opportunity, and independent thinking. Today, Colombia is waging a battle to defend the rule of law against groups that finance their terror through drug trafficking.