OTHER VIEWS: More free-trade beneficial

A bright spot in President Barack Obama’s otherwise lackluster Asian tour could be found in his stop in Seoul, where the president rightly pledged to advance a free-trade agreement with South Korea.

For the past two years, during a time our nation could have benefited from more economic activity, an agreement to adopt a free-trade pact President George W. Bush promoted has languished in Congress. We hope Obama can persuade holdouts in his party to stop stalling the agreement, and are encouraged to hear the president call for a more sophisticated understanding of international trade.

“There’s a tendency to lump all of Asia together when Congress looks at trade agreements and says it appears this is a one-way street,” Obama said.

Even without the trade agreement, South Korea is America’s seventh-largest trading partner. It is the 13th largest economy in the world. The nation gained its economic muscle after moving away from government-directed central planning and embracing a free-market system, making it a potent symbol in the region.

Estimates are that the South Korea free-trade pact would boost the $80 billion in annual trade between our countries by as much as $20 billion a year within five years.

What’s more, the expectation is that American farmers and automakers would benefit most, because their products face the toughest Korean trade barriers.

Most economists roundly reject protectionist trade policies because they defy the logic of the so-called Law of Comparative Advantage, which argues that all sides benefit when countries exploit their differing production costs by specializing in particular goods or services. And centuries of experience certainly bear the theory out.

Yet American automakers and trade unions, traditional Democratic backers, argue against further opening of trade with South Korea. The automakers claim the trade agreement includes provisions that would make it more difficult for American cars to sell in Korea.

“It’s hard to imagine how you get the agreement through Congress,” Philip Levy, a senior trade official in the prior administration, told The Wall Street Journal.

Obama insists that the trade agreement would not benefit Korea more than the U.S., and he seems to have the better case. As our nation struggles to regain its economic footing, however, Congress could do us a big favor by making it easier to do business in the South Korean marketplace. - From the Denver Post