The American Enterprise Institute presents ... Free Trade Foreign Policy; How Trade Myths Impede a key US Policy Tool

For at least four years, bilateral free trade agreements (FTA) have been a battleground over which US trade skeptics and trade proponents have skirmished. While three such agreements -- with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama -- were condemned to a policy purgatory, the accord with Peru came into force in early 2009. That deal thus offers the best and most recent opportunity to separate the growing myths about FTAs from the more realistic benefits that such deals can offer to the US. Part of the problem in discussing the impact of trade agreements on the US is that discourse is dominated by an antiquated view of what a trade agreement does. While the employment implications tend to dominate political debates about free trade agreements, they are not the only objections lodged. The more dramatic effect should be in facilitating the entry of allied nations into a rules-based global trading system.