Let's be blunt: The steel tariffs were an abomination. The increase in farm subsidies was a travesty. In Bush's first term, his administration's trade policy was hardly a paragon of virtue. But it was good enough for stalwart free trader (and Democrat) Jagdish Bhagwati to admit during an election year that between Bush and Kerry, the Republican had the more responsible trade policy.
The record reflects Bhagwati's assessment. The administration jump-started the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks in the wake of the September 11 attacks. After the debacle at Cancun, when a clash between the developing and developed world dashed any hope of progress, it was U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick who got the process back on track. And the only reason there is a WTO round at all is that President Bush fought for and (barely) won trade promotion authority, something Bill Clinton was never able to do. I haven't even mentioned the spurt of bilateral and regional free trade agreements, including pacts with Australia and Central America.
The administration should also be praised, in true classical liberal fashion, for what it has not done. The Bush team has not taken steps to block offshore outsourcing, despite intense bipartisan pressure to halt the newest forms of trade.
And finally, remember those steel tariffs? They're gone now.
Daniel Drezner is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of The Sanctions Paradox (Cambridge University Press).
I Fear...Society Will Be Less Free
Bob Barr
The last four years have not been kind to privacy in America. In fact, the first administration of George W. Bush was the most anti-privacy administration in history. While the post-9/11 fight against terrorists has been the excuse given for virtually all of the anti-privacy measures instituted since that fateful day, many of the powers granted to or assumed by the administration have less to do with a clear-cut, narrowly crafted "war on terrorism" than with a general desire to gather as much information on the American citizenry as possible, as easily as possible.
The next four years are likely to be even worse. The newly re-elected president is certain to use the "political capital" of which he boasts to reauthorize all those provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act that are scheduled to sunset in 2005 and to dramatically expand the law's scope. Even more than outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft, Attorney General�designate Alberto Gonzales appears to support virtually unlimited executive branch power to gather evidence on the citizenry.
Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, is the American Conservative Union's 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy.
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