If you think there are no costs to President Obama's opposition to new trade deals, witness the tentative free trade agreement struck Tuesday by South Korea and the European Union. It's expected to be a comprehensive accord that will reduce or eliminate most tariffs on goods and liberalize European investment in Korea's tightly regulated service sector.
There's a warning here for Democrats in Washington, and especially for Mr. Obama.
The Bush Administration signed a trade accord of its own with Seoul in 2007. That pact would have thrown open most of the world's 13th-largest economy to American companies and boosted U.S. GDP by $10 billion to $12 billion. It also would have cemented America's relationship with an important ally.
Yet congressional Democrats have stalled ratification, largely at the behest of their Big Labor backers. Opponents claim, all evidence to the contrary, that the agreement wouldn't do enough to open Korea's car market. Mr. Obama picked up that line during the campaign and now he's running with it in office.
"We'll be prepared to step away from that,"
This week's news is a sign that other countries won't step away from trade...
[Again the average American screwed because of unions' ownership of the Democratic party.]
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