We still have them/Septics lobbying to lift drug prices and wash hands of their own agricultural protectionism - naturally “cheap”, by virtue of climate, Australian sugar is still banned from US.

Go figure - it is all one big scam wherein “a little Aussie battler”, Rupert Murdoch, now has the outsourced role as Goebbels for Bush Administration!

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Will an agreement actually materialize out of such negotiations? Well, that remains to be seen….

And Marmot: it’s “per se,” not “per-say.”

granted, the port is not entirely based on government funds but more than say, Vancouver can afford to invest in its port, i have been told…which is what makes me think in the end, pursuing these FTAs just kind of wipes out the point of these things in a way.

i wonder if there are more benefits for foreign companies under an FTA agreement vs. the incentives offered by these free zones which would make waiting it out worth it…

granted, there is still a huge european, south american, mid-eastern and asian market to benefit from such things, but with rumors about an FTA being completed between Korea and Japan and now this announcement regarding FTAs with the US, there go two big, huge markets right there.

if anything, it’s going to be a blow to these free trade zone initiatives for instead of rushing into the country now, i bet most of the foreign companies coming from the US and Japan (which are probably some of Korea’s biggest investors) are just going to wait it out until the FTAs are complete and take advantage of the FTAs and lose interest in these free zones.

i don’t really understand it i guess. i mean, these FTAs sound good for both sides, but in a way, isn’t korea just shooting intself in the foot since it’s gone through all this work and heavy government investment to make all these “zones” appeal to foreign investors/businesses with a heavy reliance on the U.S. and Japan in particular?

or am i being too pessimistic here?

I suspected you were being sarcastic, but it seems there are a lot of supposed “free-trade advocates” who believe some such thing… We want country X and country Y to open up their car markets, but we’re going to slap tariffs on their steel.

Might I ask something, Kushibo? Is there a particular reason you prefer to cite things using bold print rather than blockquoting them? I mean, use whatever you prefer, but I was just curious as to why.

Blogspot has no blockquoting function for comments, so I just got in the habit of using bold instead, I guess. It’s also easier to write out the b tags than the blockquote tags. I type fast and often trip over the q’s.

As a general rule, I try to use blockquoting when quoting a “source” rather than another commenter’s comments, but I have changed my style from time to time when a blog’s layout has changed, sometimes mimicking other commenters’ quoting style when I think it has more aesthetic appeal. I think blocked-quotes looked better in your old format than this one, for example.

Being in favor free trade only in cases where you are going to come out on top is NOT being in favor of free trade.

As was the case when I wrote the post to which that was linked, I was being sarcastic. But you knew that already, I suppose.

Might I ask something, Kushibo? Is there a particular reason you prefer to cite things using bold print rather than blockquoting them? I mean, use whatever you prefer, but I was just curious as to why.

Being in favor free trade only in cases where you are going to come out on top is NOT being in favor of free trade.

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Which, given that this is the Korean approach, generally, not just that of the farmers, is why there ain’t going to be a ROK-US FTA, unless the US gets remarkably stupid or caves into the interests of a very, very few large US industries (e.g., autos, pharmaceuticals)at the expense of all others. The sticking point is not going to be on terms of cross-border trade in goods and services so much as on terms of FDI.