Supporting Free-trade or Not

Why Are Economists and Non-economists So Far Apart? , this article, in which the author intended to discuss and explain that why there were widely different attitudes towards free-trade between the economists and non-economists, what’s more, suggestions were given by the author simultaneously in order to make efforts to close the gap between two parties.

One of reasons that I am interested in this topic is that I remember that we talked about the impact of politics to trade policy of U.S. in our last class, and the other reason is the rising arguments about free-trade around U.S., which most likely associated with politics that I have focus on for many years.

Based on the democracy in America, any implementations of trade restrictions has to get legislative intervention involved, which leads to a fact that the legislation is often to highlight the visibility of the gains to those who have seized privilege and benefits, which aims to attract votes from those interest group. Otherwise, they sometimes hide the benefits, for the sake of reducing the potential opposition of publicity. Respectively, the media, they understand the significance of the political-favors principle, so a free and enterprising press is needed to be heard by publicity. In this article, the author emphasized the important role of the press today, who are suggested to cover impartial reporting, which are complete, involves exploring who gains, who loses, and the net of gains and losses for the nation as a whole.

To my perspective, a number of argument for free-trade and relatively maintaining certain industries in U.S. are sentimental, partly influenced by exaggerate purposely reports, which mislead and irritated average people who are not familiar with the trade issues. Therefore, I agree with the point mentioned in this article -It is essential to keep two principles -the simultaneity principle and the political-favors principle-in mind when reporting on trade issues.