Allowing countries to decide what to ban is just saying that ag goods are exempt from free trade.
Why should the US put up with this? We have a natural advantage in agriculture, with very high productivity.
If you're against free trade, ok, but that's going to apply to European exports of all kinds. And if the trade motivation for links with Europe goes away, so does the motivation for defending Europe via NATO. NATOxit (NATOff? NATOut?) would cost Europe enormously.
Unfortunately, this will just increase imports from countries that don't ban them and make life harder for local farmers. It's the blessing of free trade based on lowest common denominators.
Agreed. The only reason I can sort of accept is that making trade illegal would cause some items to be hidden completely. (Which is not a moral reason to accept trade.)
This is where government sanctions come in. While some companies may behave morally, we can't expect that they all will when there is money to be made.
If we the people as represented by our government decide that a particular foreign regime is off-limits, then companies are compelled to not do business with them. We don't leave it to choice.
As a completely practical matter, a country is entitled to do what it wants to protect an industry. I'd agree that it is usually a bad idea, but every country does it to some degree. If France decides it has a right (god given, or lawfully given) to a wine industry then it can ban all wine imports. I'm not sure why you'd call out America for this, it has been far more open to trade than most countries, and benefitted from it. UNfortunately it has left some people behind and caused a backlash.
Our income are worth less and our food stuffs are being shipped abroad because there are certain countries willing to pay more than we are for it (cough china cough). An export ban would do wonders at lowering food prices but that would worsen the already bad trade deficiet.
Don't expect any help from any one in this regard
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You can have export restrictions in law, it's entirely different to enforce them. We can look at things like the drug trade to see how well that works.
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