Beef and autos are the big holdups on the South Korea FTA.  The whole agreement is, in truth, not worth the paper it's written on.  For now, I'll take this hold up as we try to get the U.S. to rationalize trade policy.

The U.S. and South Korea had a deal on beef before.  Then President Lee Myung-bak was faced by hundreds of thousands of Koreans protesting him and driving his approval rating to 20%.  So he sent his negotiators to re-negotiate.

Apparently the re-negotiations lasted a bit longer than five minutes.

The U.S. needs to put these trade agreements on hold.  Under the guise of lowering tariffs, they entrench modern trade problems of foreign subsidies, currency manipulation, border adjustable taxes, and deficits.  The IMF was designed to help countries out of current balance of payments problems - i.e. the government equivalent of a cash flow crisis.  But the trade agreements are causing an ongoing current account crisis in the U.S. - a year after year after year trade deficit.

Tariffs are not the problem anymore.  We need a macro-approach to deal with trade policy. 

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