Free Trade Slip-Sliding Away? Congress Becoming Protectionist over Trade Imbalances

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Byline: Tony Blankley, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), President Bush's modest little trade bill that would benefit the U.S. economy at least as much as Central America's, is edging toward defeat in Congress. It is a sign of the precarious political position of the entire post-World War II free-trade regime that such a bill might be unpassable in the capital of the world's pre-eminent free-trading nation.

If the American political system is driving even free-trade believing congressmen to vote "nyet" on CAFTA, it is "adios" to globalized trade and "welkommen" to protectionist principles of international economics. (I thought I would start using up my foreign vocabulary as there may soon be a glut in the market for foreign words of salutation.) …