Free Trade: Pause or Fast-Forward?

Author: Sebastian Mallaby, Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics
April 2, 2007
Washingtonpost.com

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Two months ago an economist named Lawrence Mishel addressed the fraught politics of trade at a House committee hearing. He was not against trade, Mishel began; transactions among consenting adults are seen as a good thing by all respectable economists, and Mishel clearly wanted to be one of them. And yet, while proclaiming his support for trade, Mishel opposed actual trade deals. “We need a new approach to globalization,” he counseled. “A strategic pause. No more trade agreements.”

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