Americans are all Frenchmen now?

By Alex Singleton | 25 June 2005

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times suggests to his American readership that they are "all Frenchmen now"...

Well, not quite. But that is where we are heading in the U.S. if we let the combination of the sugar lobby, which wants to block more imports from Central America; the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which doesn't like any free trade agreements; and Democrats who just want to defeat Cafta so they can make President Bush a lame duck have their way and block Cafta ratification. I understand Democrats want to stick it to Mr. Bush, but could they please defeat him on a policy he is wrong about (there are plenty) and not on expanding free trade in this hemisphere, which he is right about.

The French economic instinct is not one we want to start emulating now, just as the global playing field is being flattened, bringing in more competitors from Poland to China to India. This is a time to play to our strengths of openness, flexibility and willingness to embrace creative destruction, and lead on free trade.

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post:

Take trade and Central America. The status quo there is widespread poverty. The Bush administration has proposed doing something about it -- a free-trade agreement encompassing five Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic.

It's a no-brainer. If we have learned anything from the past 25 years in China, India, Chile and other centers of amazing economic growth, it is that open markets and free trade are the keys to pulling millions, indeed hundreds of millions, of people out of poverty. The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is a chance to do the same for desperately poor near-neighbors...

Eighty percent of goods from these countries are already entering the United States duty-free, so CAFTA would have a minimal impact on the United States. It would, however, have a dramatic impact on these six neighbor countries...