[Moridin]

You say that ‘GATS is set up to allow free trade in services between member nations’ – ok, agreed. Exactly what part of that is not about making money for Northern industrial nations? An article in the Guardian at the beginning of this year put the value of worldwide trade in services at $1,000 billion last year. (I can email the writer to ask him where that figure originates from, if you like.) The article also mentioned that GATS has been described as the ‘Heineken’ of trade deals – taking the free market into areas that other trade deals have failed to reach.

What? Because other trade deals have failed, then we should just give up and say ‘oh well, we tried’? What if we fought wars like this…well we failed to beat the Germans in that battle, so we better not go back, analyze why we failed, and try to regroup and come up with a better solution. Wir würden alle Deutsch sprechen!

Why the $1,000 billion figure? Is this too high for you? All this tells me is that global trading of services is strong and healthy! This is not $1,000 billion out of the pocket of developing nations and into the pocket of ‘Northern Industrial nations’. The majority of this trade is between ‘Northern Industrial nations’. So what is your point, that we are screwing each other?

Is your solution to shut down our borders to anything that we can produce in our own country? I’m sorry but you are already complaining about the waste of natural resources, this will increase this problem 100 fold!!

Let’s say that country X can produce a pop can using 1lb. of aluminum, but it takes country Y 2lbs. of aluminum to produce a pop can. Both countries can produce pop cans, but is it not beneficial for country X to produce the pop cans b/c they can do it using less resources? This is where trade is beneficial!! I will post ad nausea on this later


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