Free Trade

I think I would be in favor of free trade if it was really free, but I don't think that it ever has been.  When the NAFTA deal was first formulated, I remember reading somewhere that there were 1200 pages of regulations associated with it.  How can anything that involves 1200 pages of regulations be considered free?

One thing that Trump claims to concerned about is the balance of trade between the US and other countries.  Remember "My Weekly Reader" back in elementary school?  That's the first place I ever read or heard about this balance of trade issue, and I've been reading and hearing about it ever since.  The only thing that's changed is that the country on the low end of the balance (usually us) no longer makes up the difference with gold at the end of each year.  They must make it up with U.S. dollars now, because Red China seems to have more of our currency than we do.  They don't mind because, if we run out, they will be happy to loan our own money back to us so that we can buy more of their stuff.  Well, I know how to fix that.  Instead of paying for our imports with money, they should pay  with scrip that can only be used to buy stuff from us.  I learned about scrip from the old "MASH" TV show.  It seems that, during the Korean War, somebody was concerned that our soldiers were spending too much of their paychecks on the local economy, so they started paying them with scrip that was only good at US owned establishments like the PX.  I don't think the practice was very popular back in the day, but maybe it's an idea whose time has come.

Our local newspaper has pretty good coverage of local issues.  Just before an election, they usually run a series of articles about the candidates for local offices, often with a headline that announces how many "seats are up for grabs". (I am not making this up!)  They don't take sides, they just reprint the information that the candidates give them.  Our regular primary has been in August for as long as I can remember, although separate presidential primaries are held earlier.