The Promise, Challenge and Opportunity of Free Trade

Digital Vision/Thinkstock

What's there to be pessimistic about on free trade?

The default position portrays trade deals as a threat to American jobs and wages, exposing our economic weaknesses to the world, rather than as opportunities to grow our economy and maximize our strengths.

Find out what Thomas F. 'Mack' McLarty has to say with his opinion piece published at The Wall Street Journal.

Read:  Why Democrats Should Back the President on Free Trade
(Love the 1993 photo in this piece with Larry King, Al Gore and Ross Perot.)

Selling Goods Overseas Is Easier But Still Challenging For Small Businesses

iStock/Thinkstock

While selling goods overseas is easier due to the Internet and the vast amount of information available on the subject (including this blog), it's still hard for small businesses to get paid on exports.  This is the #1 challenge for small businesses.  (Here is an article worth reading and re-reading:  An Insider's Guide to Making Payments and Getting Paid on Overseas Transactions).

Read the entire article:  Small Business:  The Cost of Expanding Overseas (WSJ.com)

Note:  Laurel is mentioned in the WSJ article along with new her new book!

America: Breathing Life Into Dreams

Digital Vision/Thinkstock

If there is one thing you read today, read this:

The North American Global Powerhouse

by George P. Schultz, a former secretary of labor, Treasury and state, and director, Office of Management and Budget, is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution

Excerpt in opinion piece where Schultz is quoting Ronald Reagan:

"While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier.

"This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost."

What Exactly Is Globalization?

We had The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy where an economist, Pietra Rivoli, examined the markets, power and the politics of world trade - sorting through and encouraging us to understand how free trade and protection have most certainly changed our world.

In the commentary recently published in The Wall Street Journal, The Economics of a $6.75 Shirt, Rubana Huq (managing director of the Mohammadi Group, a garment manufacturer and exporter in Dhaka, Bangladesh.), provides a detailed analysis of the economics of a $6.75 shirt made in Bangladesh and as it relates to Bangladesh's minimum wage.

The recent tragedies at several Bangladeshi garment factories have claimed hundreds of lives—and focused international attention on this important but often overlooked industry. Yet greater scrutiny has not led to greater understanding, raising the prospect that any proposed solutions will have serious unintended consequences for this industry and the four million people it employs. 

Read the entire commentary here (be sure to read the comments - very telling).

Photo courtesy:  ©2013 Laurel Delaney.  All rights reserved.  (Go global t-shirt - made in USA).