Free trade agreement - discuss.

Free trade agreements always have elements of coercion in them. This is now the US's preferred model has they believe their bargaining position will always give them favourable agreements. Get the other side to concede as much as possible while conceding as little as possible yourself is the name of the game.
This however, is not free trade - it is horse-trading.

For example, the US Australian agreement put sugar exports off the table because the US wants to maintain the right to protect its farmers. Beef exports as well, where we have a major comparative advantage, was also a no-no for the yanks. They also pushed us to extend our copyright laws to 70 years in order to protect their IP. We got nothing in return for this concession.
 
Earthjade said:
Free trade agreements always have elements of coercion in them. This is now the US's preferred model has they believe their bargaining position will always give them favourable agreements. Get the other side to concede as much as possible while conceding as little as possible yourself is the name of the game.
This however, is not free trade - it is horse-trading.

For example, the US Australian agreement put sugar exports off the table because the US wants to maintain the right to protect its farmers. Beef exports as well, where we have a major comparative advantage, was also a no-no for the yanks. They also pushed us to extend our copyright laws to 70 years in order to protect their IP. We got nothing in return for this concession.
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That is a different thing. You are describing an un-free trade policy. As a result of the US FTA two thirds of all agricultural tariffs were eliminated immediately with most others to be phased out more gradually. The sugar quotas was the biggest sticking point (pun intended) and any increase in the quotas would have been very sweet for us (that one too ;) ). Going into the negotiations, most of the upside benefit lay around that issue. That the US did not give in on sugar is not a problem with free trade or trying to obtain a free trade agreement. There is no "coercion" in sugar trade except by the US Govt not allowing their citizens to benefit from being able to buy even more cheaper sugar than they currently inefficiently produce.

It's a no-brainer that unfree trade is bad but that's the situation that the FTA's are attempting to unwind. Besides the IP law harmonisation type issue (or Disney's Mickey Mouse clause as it was called during the USFTA negotiations), the FTAs are reducing the pre-existing barriers. Which barriers are reduced and when is the heart of the horse trading (but ironically because we have already gotten rid of most of ours it's largely getting the other guys to reduce theirs) so to generalise FTAs as "coercive" and "shit" is simply misleading.
 
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