Enterprise: EU Schools the U.S. on Trade with Korea - by Claude Barfield

For the complete report of the The Enterprise Blog click on this link

EU Schools the U.S. on Trade with Korea - by Claude Barfield

For the past three years, when South Korean diplomats and trade economists have come to my office seeking advice on how to get the U.S. Congress to approve the pending U.S.-Korea free trade agreement (KORUS), I have had one reply: complete the negotiations for a EU-Korea free trade agreement (FTA). Given the obduracy of the U.S. automobile industry (actually, really the Ford Motor Co., with GM cowering in the background, giving tacit support but fearful of union friction from an outfront role), and the mindless opposition to all FTAs by the U.S. labor movement and its Democratic friends in the House of Representatives, only a mercantilist two-by-four across the brow had any chance of changing the U.S. political equation. And now they’ve done it. On October 15, the European Union and the Koreans initialed a final agreement. In a sweet irony, the new FTA closely tracks the template of the 2007 KORUS agreement signed by the Bush administration—only now U.S. firms will face substantial discrimination in the key manufacturing, service, and agricultural sectors where substantial liberalization has been achieved between the European Union and Korea.