Interesting. A few details as to what we export to and import from South Korea over at Angrybear. Maybe the price of that large screen HDTV will fall even further.
It is Monday morning and you are talking about a trade deal with Korea.
What happened to the Friday afternoon announcement that we were imposing tariffs on Chinese goods?
I know that announcing bad policy moves late on a Friday afternoon is standard policy, but why are you playing that game?
Spencer - maybe Kash was outsourcing the China discussion to the new Angrybear. I was tempted to say something on Friday but Cactus actually found a new paper on the topic of trade with "NMEs".
Spencer: In addition to PGL's defense, I have a slightly different perspective from you, I think. I don't see the US-Korea FTA as unequivocally good news. In fact, I'm pretty disappointed that the Bush administration spends its time and all of the pro-trade will in Washington on these little bilateral (and very possibly trade-diverting) trade deals. So I don't at all feel like I'm highlighting the good news while ignoring the bad.
Did not really mean to take it out on you.
But the point that I saw nothing in the press over the weekend on the new tariffs hit home when I saw liberal bloggers also ignoring it.
Kash - check out my errata as Spencer notes that the BLS ULC comparison are indices - not absolute comparisons. Thanks Spencer!
I don't know the details of the agreement with Korea but I have never understood why people like John Edwards are up in arms about it. Korea is not a low wage country without labor unions or environmental protections.
I was there in Feb and it has a very high standard of living overall. They also have a strong union movement - Hyundai Motors was close to being shutdown over a strike with its workers when I was there. According to the paper, this had happened numerous times in the past 10 years.
It is one thing to sign trade agreements with countries on equal economic footing. It is entirely different to sign them with countries which will clearly result in loss of jobs in the US.
Commenting by HaloScan
