November 11, 2017
The Washington Post refuses to follow journalistic norms and maintain a separation between the news and editorial pages when it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yet again the paper referred to the pact as a “free-trade” agreement.
Of course, the deal is not a free trade pact. It does little, if anything, to remove the barriers that protect highly paid professionals like doctors from international competition. Also, a major focus of the pact is longer and stronger patent and copyright protections.
These forms of protectionism have been a major factor in the upward redistribution of the last four decades. In the case of prescription drugs alone these protections add more than $370 billion annually (almost 2 percent of GDP) to what we spend on drugs. The Post supports these protections and apparently would like its readers to believe that they are somehow part of a free market.
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