A large caliber bullet in the cerebellum fired at point-blank range definitely will cure a headache. That piece of ancient wisdom comes to mind in the matter of President Obama’s candidate for Special Trade Representative, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk:

March 9 (Bloomberg) — Ron Kirk, President Barack Obama’s pick for U.S. trade representative, pledged to alter a pending accord with South Korea, saying it “isn’t fair.”

The free-trade agreement negotiated by the Bush administration “isn’t acceptable,” and will have to be changed, Kirk told the Senate Finance Committee at his confirmation hearing today.

Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, was praised by senators of both parties, who said they looked forward to working with him as Obama’s trade chief. Kirk told the panel that the administration plans to focus on enforcing existing agreements, not seeking new ones.

“We will not do deals just for the sake of doing so,” he said. He doesn’t have “deal fever,” Kirk said.

The U.S.-South Korea trade accord, the biggest for the U.S. since Nafta in 1994, was signed in June 2007. Automakers such as Ford Motor Co. opposed it, and President George W. Bush never submitted it to Congress for approval.

Democrats and some manufacturers say the deal would give Korean auto companies guaranteed access to the U.S. market without assurances that American companies can break into the Korean market. Still, companies such as Citigroup Inc. and insurance company ACE Ltd. argued it would give a boost to their efforts to crack Korea’s markets. ..l.

“President Obama has picked the right person for the job,” Texas Republican John Cornyn, who ran against Kirk for the Senate in 2002, said at the hearing. “I’m glad this day has come.”

Korea’s currency has collapsed along with its stock market as export markets dissolved. Why? ”Private money invested in so-called emerging countries plunged from $928 billion in 2007 to $466 billion last year and is likely to fall to $165 billion this year, according to the Institute of International Finance,” reported the New York Times this morning. Roughly a trillion dollars worth of capital flows have shifted from the emerging world into US Treasury securities. No wonder that Mexico’s largest and most stable companies such as Cemex are shut out of international capital markets. The tailspin of world trade will continue.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 8:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.