Wow, South Koreans are really upset about the resumption of U.S. beef imports. Here's a shot of a recent candlelight vigil protesting the move:

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

Ah, globalization at work: Workers at a factory in China's southern Guangdong province were making "Free Tibet" flags, naively unaware of what the colorful flags -- banned in China -- represented.

The owner of the factory said the orders for the flags had been placed from overseas.

Economist and blogger Tyler Cowen sallies forth in the Sunday Times to offer a solution to high prices and shortages of key staple foods: more trade.

The damage that trade restrictions cause is probably most evident in the case of rice. Although rice is the major foodstuff for about half of the world, it is highly protected and regulated. Only about 5 to 7 percent of the world's rice production is traded across borders; that's unusually low for an agricultural commodity.

So when the price goes up — indeed, many varieties of rice have roughly doubled in price since 2007 — this highly segmented market means that the trade in rice doesn't flow to the places of highest demand.

It's a good piece, but Harvard economist and free-trade skeptic Dani Rodrik takes Cowen to task for allegedly forgetting that rice prices in producer countries would likely go up if their farmers exported more. Cowen disagrees; Rodrik writes in Cowen's comment section, "Free trade in rice would do little to alleviate the food crisis we are facing, and in fact would probably make it worse in the short run as it would result in a further increase in the real price of rice on world markets."

All I wish to point out here is that many countries are already reducing tariffs on imported foods, if not rice specifically. According to the World Bank, some 24 of 58 surveyed (pdf) have done so, including India, Peru, Turkey, Mongolia, and Burkina Faso. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before other countries do so as well.

Graphic: World Bank

Earlier this month, the documentary version of FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím's bestselling book Illicit aired on the TV channel PBS in the United States. The film and book documents how -- as the book's subtitle says -- "smugglers, traffickers, and copycats are hijacking the global economy."

Those copycats who profit off pirated DVDs had better be careful, though. The doggy duo of Lucky and Flo are out to get them. The black Labs are the first canines to have been trained to sniff out the polycarbonates found in DVDs and CDs. Although they can't differentiate between legit and pirated discs, their noses lead human investigators to discs that are hidden in cargo that has been declared as having other items, such as clothing. Lucky and Flo have been so successful that they've even received death threats from crime syndicates.

Check out a video of the furry crime fighters here:

Salah Malkawi/Getty Images

Every two years, military and government VIPs from around the world descend on Amman, Jordan for the Special Operations Forces Exhibition, the Middle East's largest military equipment trade show. Exhibitors and buyers from the United States and Britain rub shoulders with their counterparts from Libya and Syria, all in the name of superior military capability.

For more images from the convention floor at SOFEX 2008, check out the new FP photo essay, "Where the World Shops for Weapons."

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

Back in November, Passport noted that urban Indian hospitals were developing their telemedicine capabilities in order to cater to the country's rural citizens. Now, that expertise is set to benefit patients all across Africa. As the first India-Africa summit kicks off in Delhi, India's efforts build and expand its ties across the African continent are already underway.

Last July, the Indian government -- working with the African Union -- launched the 542 crore ($135.6 million) Pan-African E-network project. The initiative has been called Africa's largest infrastructure project in history, and is designed to develop Africa's information and satellite communications technologies. It aims to connect 53 African countries to a satellite and fiber-optic network. Telemedicine is just one component of this broader scheme, and African countries are already seeing the results. The Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for instance, is connected to the Care Group of Hospitals (cardiac specialists) in Hyderabad, where Indian doctors can advise Ethiopian doctors on X-ray and laboratory test result interpretation via a high-speed internet connection. During its year-long pilot run, Black Lion doctors have used the link more than 50 times, and Indian officials estimate the E-network project has helped 100 patients. Telemedicine programs are set to expand across the continent.

The Indian government hopes to increase its sales in information and communication technologies to Africa, and gain a foothold in this sector before China can dominate. In addition to helping patients and developing African countries' ICT infrastructure, projects such as the telemedicine venture will also create goodwill between India and the continent -- a sentiment often lacking in China-Africa relations.

With India also hungry for resources that Africa can provide, developing these types of mutually-beneficial linkages could favor India in the long run. And through its relatively long history with Africa, India has been able to take advantage of existing cultural and commercial affinities to expand the relationship. As a result, trade between India and Africa has ballooned to $20 billion (2006/2007) from $967 million in 1991 (when India began its economic reforms). But whether these efforts, and India's attempts at creating goodwill, can compete with China's cash and favors remains to be seen.

Guardian blogger Richard Silverstein has posted a translated excerpt from the Swiss newspaper Sonntag that explores Israel's apparent oil purchases from Iran:

Israel imports Iranian oil on a large scale even though contacts with Iran and purchasing of its products are officially boycotted by Israel. Israel gets around the boycott by having the oil delivered via Europe. A reliable Israeli energy newsletter, EnergiaNews, reported this last week [March 18] ...

EnergiaNews got the information about the Iran trade from sources with ties to the management of Israeli Oil Refineries Ltd ... According to EnergiaNews the Iranian oil is liked in Israel because its quality is better than other crude oils.

The report by EnergiaNews editor Moshe Shalev states that the Iranian oil reaches various European ports, mainly in Rotterdam. It is bought by Israelis and the necessary European bill of lading and insurance papers are supplied. Then it is transported to Haifa in Israel. The importer is the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC), which keeps its oil sources secret.

Silverstein also links to a Haaretz article from last October which reports that Israel planned to import oil from Iran to sell to the Palestinian Authority. It seems that despite its stated boycott of Iranian products, Israel doesn't actually formally define Iran as an "enemy nation" so this deal isn't technically illegal. Still, it's a bit hard to reconcile with the apocalyptic rhetoric of some Israeli politicians. I'm also curious to see how Iran's leaders justify trade with the "Zionist entity."

FILE: Mark Penn; Win McNamee/Getty Images

I must admit, I'm puzzled as to why it's supposed to be such a big deal that Hillary Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn (right) met with Bogotá's ambassador to Washington about the controversial U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The key point to remember about this and other FTAs in Latin America is that they're much more about politics than they are about economics. Ninety percent of U.S. imports from Colombia have already been entering the United States without any tariff, thanks to prior agreements. Peterson Institute analyst Jeffrey J. Schott estimated in 2006 that any welfare gains (GDP boost) from a U.S.-Colombia FTA would be positive, but "relatively small" -- roughly half a percentage point for the Colombians, and a negligible amount for the United States. If anything, the agreement is about lowering Colombia's tariff barriers to U.S. goods, solidifying trade relations, and lowering the risk that President Álvaro Uribe's successor will have a different economic philosophy. So, claims by U.S. labor activists that the FTA would be bad for U.S. manufacturers are little more than dishonest fearmongering.

That said, I'm not on board with U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab's hyperbole, either. Can it really be that the dangling FTA, not the drug war, is the root of Latin America's problems today?

Leaders in the hemisphere and Latin America have said that the single most destabilizing factor in Latin America today may be the U.S. Congress's failure to ratify the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. That is more destabilizing today than anything that Colombia's neighbor Venezuela is doing or threatening to do— and that is saying a lot.

Last week, Serbia announced it would refrain from placing an embargo on Kosovo, whose economy has already suffered under eight years of undefined status.

Despite the announcement, legal trade between Kosovo and Serbia has dropped by an estimated 50 percent since Feb. 17, a noticeable loss as Serbia has otherwise remained Kosovo's biggest source of imports over the last 8 years.

High on the list of goods in short supply are the tasty, strangely addicting, Serbia-made treat known as the Plazma cookie. Plazma cookies and other goods have reportedly disappeared from Kosovar markets due to strict product label requirements. Since independence, Kosovo has required all products distributed in Kosovo to say "Republic of Kosovo." This is a problem under Serbian law:

A company, Serbian or foreign, can face fines of up to 1.0 million dinars ($19,000) if it mentions Kosovo as a separate territory on labels used on products sold in Serbian stores. Terms allowed are 'UNMIK/Kosovo', referring to the United Nations mission that took over the province in 1999 after NATO expelled Serb forces, 'Kosovo, Serbia' and 'Kosovo/1244', the number of the Security Council resolution that put Kosovo under U.N. administration."

According to Reuters reporters Ivana Sekularac and Shaban Buza, such discrepancies send a message of market uncertainty, curbing trade and regional investment. But Plazma has found a solution. The cookie company has simply opted to list the Kosovo distributor as in Albania. And it's a good thing, too:

Plazma are one of the most wanted and best-selling Serbian products, people really like them," said Tahir, an employee at a big supermarket in Pristina. "We tried with some similar Italian cookies, but in the end sold only two packs."

Not too surprising -- I bet the Italian cookies don't have quite the same effect.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may think they have their hands full with NAFTA, but just wait until it's time to renegotiate DSFTA, the Deep Space Free Trade Agreement. In the latest issue of Astropolitics, political scientist John Hickman thinks where no social scientist has thunk before in his new article, "Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade."

Hickman believes that interplanetary trade could be one of the primary economic drivers for space exploration in the future. The potential problems are by no means minor, however. First of all, the vast distances between solar systems would probably prohibit the transportation of tangible goods. (Though, as Hickman points out, transatlantic trade probably seemed just as fanciful to traders in renaissance Europe.) There may however be potential for trade in non-tangible goods such digital entertainment, or scientific information with newly discovered alien species. But even this is not without dilemmas that would give Austan Goolsbee a migraine.

How will we enforce contracts or copyright laws on a civilization 20 light-years away? How will we set up a banking system or transferable currency without any tangible goods to trade? How will we protect ourselves from strange new ideas and ideologies that may destroy the fabric of our society? Worst of all, how will we trade with a species that may not even have a concept of trade?

Economic exchange itself might be "alien" to the aliens. Members of an alien species may not experience the same intense sense of self that is exhibited in rationally self-interested economic exchange among humans. Instead, a collective identity could be dominant. Money might not exist and without it neither would complex markets or banking. If they do engage in economic exchange it might take a form akin to potlatch, the competitive gift-giving for status solely among members of the same tribe traditional among societies in Melanesia and the Pacific Northwest. Moreover an alien species might not live in separate societies and could thus have no conception of trade between different societies with different cultures.

Can we maintain our free-market values and still trade with these hippie space communists? Hickman proposes establishing a "solar system monetary union" or publicly administered "planetary clearinghouse" under which interplanetary merchants could operate. The good news is, even after discovering alien life, we would still need to decode their language and acquire a basic cultural understanding before we can even think about initiating trade. This should give us enough time to bone up on all 285 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

Travis Daub contributed to this post.

UPDATE: Tyler Cowen weighs in --

[R]eciprocal, tit-for-tat exchange would work just fine, provided that a) relativity did not slow down the exchange of information too much, and b) not too many Ohio voters watched that movie where the aliens send us their genetic information, embedded in an apparently innocuous transmission, and trick us into downloading those instructions and then cloning them en masse...  In other words, we probably cannot trade with aliens.

Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, author of In Defense of Globalization and other fine works, sallies forth in today's Financial Times to say that Barack Obama would be a better free trader than Hillary Clinton. He offers five main arguments:

1. Clinton wants to pause the Doha round of trade talks; Obama never said so.
2. Obama has better economic advisors, such as Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago.
3. The unions that support Obama are less opposed to trade than those that support Clinton.
4. Clinton must oppose NAFTA more strongly than Obama because her husband supported it.
5. Obama proposed the Patriot Employer Act, a politically smart but economically stupid idea that will never be enacted. Proposing it and letting it fail will allow Obama to "abandon the anti-trade rhetoric and embrace the multilateral free trade that has served the American and the world interest so well."

It seems like the sort of argument that Obama -- who is under attack for Goolsbee's alleged "wink and nod" to the Canadians over NAFTA -- would want to see aired after today's Ohio primary.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Barack Obama's campaign has been fighting reports that one of its economic advisors, University of Chicago Professor Austan Goolsbee (above), told Canadian officials what we all know anyway -- that Obama's rhetoric on NAFTA won't amount to much if the candidate wins in November. Goolsbee says a memo about his conversation with the Canadians mischaracterized what he said, but he agrees he told them this:

On NAFTA, Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more 'core' principles of the agreement."

So, is the Obama campaign now claiming that this "strengthening/clarifying language" is going to bring manufacturing jobs back to Ohio? Give me a break.

I'm obviously sympathetic to Matthew Cooper's complaint that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are cynically donning populist garb for the Ohio primary, but this is the wrong way to make the argument:

Likewise, Barack Obama who voted along with Clinton for recent trade agreements with Peru and Oman is also outraged by NAFTA. Please.

Cooper is comparing apples and watermelons. The Peru deal, as noted here, is a miniscule agreement that is primarily about lowering Peruvian trade barriers to U.S. goods. Similarly, the Oman deal includes a lot of language about opening the financial sector there to U.S. firms. Annual bilateral trade between the United States and Oman is not much more than $1 billion, and the two countries are not major trading partners. In both cases, the stated rationale for the deal was primarily geopolitical, not economic. So, it might be perfectly consistent to see the far larger NAFTA as a bad deal and yet support Peru and Oman.

Of course, neither Obama nor Clinton want to actually repeal NAFTA, mind you. They just want to "renegotiate" it -- a promise you can safely file in the same category as "closing tax loopholes" and "cracking down on wasteful government spending."

The Politico's Ben Smith blogs about the above anti-Obama mailer that's making the rounds and makes a good point:

The odd thing here is that both Clinton and Obama come from the pro-trade wing of the party. Both have, in less heated moments, defended free trade in theory, and neither wants to repeal Nafta.

But when in Ohio, you argue about who hates trade more.

Politicians pandering to voters? Shocking.

One issue that has been heretofore lurking quietly in the background of the 2008 campaign has been China. No more. As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton set their sights on Midwestern states hid hard by job losses, China has begun to crop up more frequently on the campaign trail. Here's a union supporter of the Obama campaign today, in a statement condemning the granting of "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) to China:

Ohio workers know the truth about NAFTA — Ohio ranks 5th among all states in the number of jobs and opportunities lost due to the rising trade deficit with Canada and Mexico since the passage of NAFTA. Ohio lost nearly 50,000 jobs due to NAFTA alone. And they know that PNTR did not create leverage for the U.S. over China, it led the way to a massive trade deficit, unenforced trade laws, and more Americans looking for work.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A number of other tough issues for China's PR machine are only going to gain prominence as the campaign progresses. You can expect boilerplate language from any of the candidates about the need to "engage" China, followed by some cathartic bashing of China's human-rights record, its relationship with Sudan, its currency manipulation, its military spending, etc. So, are the Chinese big enough to shrug it all off as political rhetoric?

Toys. Pet food. Dumplings. None of these potentially dangerous products with Chinese components has really scared me thus far. But this LA Times story sent a chill down my spine:

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating whether an ingredient from China may be the source of problems with a blood thinner linked to hundreds of reports of severe allergic reactions and possibly several deaths. [...]

As with food ingredients, China in recent years has become a major exporter of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Medicine Economic News, citing China's customs statistics, reported that the nation's exports of heparin and its components totaled $57.8 million in the first half of 2007, a 13.7% increase from the same period a year earlier. The Guangzhou-based publication said 49 companies exported heparin and its ingredients.

Baxter announced Monday that it was suspending manufacture of multiple-dose vials of heparin. The injectable drug, which is derived from pig intestines, is used to prevent dangerous blood clots from forming during certain types of surgery, including heart bypass. Baxter accounts for about half the U.S. market for the drug.

Assuming the FDA's suspicions are confirmed, how many other commonly used drugs have ingredients made in China? We know there have been problems with fake anti-malaria pills and fake glycerin used in cough syrup. Anything else out there?

As Blake pointed out earlier, Barack Obama has taken aim at free trade in the run-up to the upcoming blue-collar-dominated primaries in Ohio and Wisconsin. The attack that began in earnest last night in Obama's Potomac Primary victory speech will continue at noon today in Janesville, Wisconsin, where Obama is promising to deliver a detailed speech on economic policy. The Illinois senator, who is big on hopes and dreams but not so big on details, apparently plans to tell suffering Americans that globalization is to blame for their plight. Here's a sneak preview:

The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was... the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it's produced...

[D]ecades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear...

I also won't stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements...

I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for... American workers."

This is the same guy who keeps promising to heal America's relationship with the world, right? Maybe it's just me, but forcing protectionist agreements down our trading partners' throats doesn't sound like such a good start. Neither does blaming them for America's subprime fiasco, a home-grown crisis fueled by Alan Greenspan and the Fed, which now threatens to wreak havoc on many of the globe's biggest economies. Good luck with that line, Barack.

Delivering his victory speech last night, Barack Obama gave his usual spiel about the "Washington game," and then took aim at U.S. trade policies:

It's a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart.

This is the highest-profile attack Obama has launched on this issue, and it comes ahead of primaries in Wisconsin and Ohio, two states where the Democratic base is very angry about trade. Obama's remarks are a preview of the critique he'll be launching against Hillary Clinton, whose husband pushed hard for NAFTA's passage over the objections of many in his own party. (Hillary has called for taking a second look at the treaty, and voted against a number of free-trade agreements in recent years.)

Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

So, what about the factual claim? Has NAFTA shipped U.S. jobs overseas? Well, it doesn't make a lot of sense, since Mexico and Canada share land borders with the United States. But in the United States, there was never the "giant sucking sound" of jobs heading south that Ross Perot railed against. Most economists will tell you in general that technology has a lot more to do with lost manufacturing jobs than trade does.

As for NAFTA, it was intended primarily to help Mexico, and on that score it has been a mixed bag. The Mexican business community loves it; small farmers hate it (see the above photo). Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, a big NAFTA booster in the Clinton Treasury Department, discusses some of went wrong in this YouTube video from October 2006:

Mexico is now further behind the United States in relative terms than it was in 1992, and the distribution of income within Mexico has become much more unequal.... Perhaps we would have been better off advising Mexico in the 1990s to focus its attention on fixing its education system and cleaning up its public-sector corruption than in going for free trade with America. I'm still a believer in NAFTA, yes, but my belief is relatively shaky now.

Tyler Cowen, who strongly supports NAFTA, adds:

The more globalized parts of Mexico -- most of all the north -- have done extremely well since NAFTA passed. The biggest problems remain in the least globalized parts, most of all the south and big chunks of the interior.

Here's Mike Huckabee last night in the Republican debate, explaining why he opposes the tax rebates that are the centerpiece of the "stimulus plan" being debated by Congress:

Well, if we end up with the rebates, we're going to borrow the $150 billion from China. And when we turn it into rebates, most people are going to go out and buy some consumables, like a pair of shoes that they probably don't even need, but they're going to buy them, and they're most likely an import from China. My point is, whose economy are we stimulating when we do that?"

Huh? By this logic, Americans shouldn't be buying things at all. As a top U.S. Commerce Department official put it recently, "China is the single-largest supplier of inexpensive products purchased by American consumers." So, should Americans stop buying Chinese goods altogether? That's not so easy to do. And besides, millions of Americans are employed at businesses, such as Wal-Mart, that sell Chinese products. Should those businesses be shunned?

The whole point of a stimulus package, as Harvard economist Martin Feldstein put it in an interview with FP, is to offset "the risk of an economic downturn." With growth in U.S. consumer spending grinding to a halt, it sounds to me like some offsetting would be a good idea right now.

PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images

Remember all the fuss earlier this year about contaminated food products coming from China? Well fear no more. At least, that's the word from the U.S. government. Earlier this week, U.S. and Chinese officials signed an agreement on food safety that will allow U.S. regulators to inspect Chinese food processing facilities and, they hope, keep unsafe products from reaching U.S. shores.

It sounds deliciously promising. That is, until you look at the plan's details.

As reported, the inspection regime does not cover all food products. The new inspection rules cover preserved foods, pet food, and fish. Increased inspections of meats or other fresh foods is apparently not in the cards. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't have the budget to keep up with such a demanding inspection regime. Currently, only 1 percent of imported food is inspected. Nor is the FDA's budget set to rise drastically: The agency is getting about $100 million next year above its current budget level of $1.5 billion. That increase barely keeps up with rising operational costs and is not nearly enough to cover all the new overseas inspections that need to be performed.

U.S. officials are quick to point out that the inspections are targeted at those products that pose the greatest risk, and the agreement leaves room for expansion in the types of products tested. Well, I feel better already. Now it seems like all I have to worry about is practically everything else labeled "Made in China."