American trade policy presumes that an exchange between an American and a foreign citizen is fundamentally morally different than trade between two Americans. Because Nova Scotia never joined the other British colonies in the 1776-1783 revolution, the Commerce Department judged a Canadian company guilty of dumping groundfish in its sales in Boston. Because Britain and the United States agreed in 1849 that the 49th parallel would be the boundary between the western United States and Canada, the Commerce Department condemned as unfairly priced raspberries from Saskatchewan sold in Seattle. If one company charges different prices in Vancouver, Washington, and Miami, Florida, that is fine. But if another company charges exactly the same different prices in Vancouver, Canada, and Miami, Florida, the U.S. Commerce Department rushes out to collect a few hundred thousand pages of documents to find out what went wrong.
Trade barriers come down to a question of political legitimacy.
His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , Newsweek , and Reader's Digest . To subscribe to the print version of Freedom Daily Click Here . All rights reserved.