Free Trade

When Presidents Clinton and Bush supported free trade agreements with Latin America congress opposed their initiatives. In this essay I am going to discuss why free trade is beneficial, why presidents favor free trade while members of congress oppose it, under what conditions congress will support Presidential free trade agreements, how an adversarial legislature can assist Presidents in strategic trade negotiations, and finally whether free trade zone is a good idea. Free trade is beneficial …

…because enforcing them is more expensive than breaking them. Thus institutions will break apart. Second, unilateralism is bad because other countries will also do unilateral decisions (and this will stop cooperation and this will harm everybody) and at the same time institutions will fall apart, which is bad. I advocate that the U.S. should do a little of institutions and unilateralism as it does now. This way it gets the benefits of both worlds.