From Bloomberg Asia:

The U.S. and South Korea reached a free-trade accord worth as much as $29 billion that if ratified would be the largest for the U.S. since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Bhatia told reporters after the press conference that he wished rice had been included in the accord. About half of South Korean farmers grow rice, and duties keep prices about four times that of the world average, according to a report by the American University in Washington.

“We were pushing rice all the way up until the very end,'’ Bhatia said. “We will look to continually raise the rice issue with our counterparts.'’

Yet another “Free Trade” agreement that only applies to specific imports and exports. I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that the theory of Free Trade is such that the benefits can only be completely realized when the tariffs on all products are removed. Whether you believe Free Trade is good or not isn’t important as long as you can accept that by these two countries calling their accord a “Free Trade” agreement, they obviously think so. And if it’s good, why wouldn’t the standard of living everywhere be raised if Free Trade policies were applied more universally? And if it would, then why not do it? And if the argument is that it will negatively affect certain industries in this country, then why not call this agreement what it is, which is essentially a mutual bribe that represents no real interest in the fundamental issue of Free Trade?