Re: “Why isn’t the White House doing more to advance free trade?” [July 22, Opinion]:
I enjoyed reading the well-written Op-Ed on free trade. The Heritage Foundation authors tipped their hand when they stated, “Clearly, the administration hopes to exercise its executive powers to regulate and control trade flows in ways that will advance items higher on its agenda. But tying trade to unrelated issues like climate change, gender policies and policies that stack the deck in favor of labor unions can’t help but muddy trade relationships.”
They could have included slave and child labor but did not. An economic model that puts profits over people as well as the future of the planet and sees laborers as simply a resource to be exploited needs to be challenged by a country that proposes to care about individual liberty and human rights, and our children’s future.
Simply put, if not us then who? We must use our purchasing power to affect the working conditions of those who produce what we enjoy and the planetary impact from it, from those in the field to those in the factory and the impact on climate, regardless of where they are located.
Trade is power. Let’s use it.
Frank Jose, Seattle