Free imports and falling prices spurred demand, making India the largest buyer of gold in the world.
In textiles, for example, Kenyan manufacturers have been exposed to duty-free imports brought in by people with close connections to the ruling elite.
Third, Brazil wants to limit tariff-free imports by a quota similar to the one imposed on car trade in Mercosur in response to surges in imports.
Even though free trade makes imports cheaper, it is often controversial.
In 2010 almost two-thirds of its imports entered free of duty, compared with just over a quarter in Brazil.
For much the same reason, America is also including duty-free privileges for certain imports from nearby bits of Indonesia in its planned deal with Singapore.
The five-year-old law allowing in duty free many categories of imports from Ecuador is set to expire in February, and might well not be renewed.
Add in free trade for all imports from countries with cheaper labour, and fears that the budget deficit could bring inflation during the under-demand sound oxymoronic.
But life has been very different for the more traditional farmers, exposed by the (fairly) free market to wheat imports from Argentina and maize from the United States.
But thanks to the new free trade agreement, imports from the U.S. were up 13% in the first five months of this year over the same period in 2001.
But as a result of the new free-trade agreement, imports from the U.S. were up 13% in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2001.
They tax the cheap imports and thus reject that free money on offer.
And if the value of trade is in the imports then gaining the value of free trade is very simple indeed.
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That said, the Bush administration has protected some American industries against Chinese imports if less eagerly than free-traders feared.
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But without the risk of a dispute-settlement case, other countries would feel free to maintain whatever trade barriers they liked against imports from the recalcitrant country, or even to put up some new ones.
Again, this will be a repeat of the Reagan era, when free-trade rhetoric was contradicted by measures to restrict imports from Japan.
Last week, the head of Ford's European operations warned jobs would be lost in the car industry following free trade deals with some Asian economies which had increased imports.
In Congress, Vitter promoted President Bush's tax cuts, seeking to make them permanent, but differed from the White House when it came to immigration and the Central America Free Trade Agreement, because it did not exempt sugar imports.
The authorities are not yet ready to allow Singaporeans complete freedom to chew gum either: they have lifted a ban on imports, but only of the sugar-free sort, only to be sold in pharmacies and only to purchasers who register with the pharmacist first.
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Unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain also favors the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, which would primarily remove tariffs on American imports into that country, with barriers to Colombian exports in America already almost completely removed under the Andean Trade Preferences Act.
Its reliance on imports and exports could well make it a champion for free trade.
They favour free trade (unless they work in an industry threatened by cheap foreign imports), have faith in international institutions and produce the required corporate guff in favour of affirmative action.
In Indonesia, textile, furniture and electronics manufacturers are shouting about imports from China that followed the lifting of tariffs in a regional free-trade pact.
He worries that Peru's recently approved free-trade agreement with the United States will lead to a flood of subsidised imports.
No bilateral free-trade agreement exists, and India often flirts with slapping duties on Chinese imports, most recently of power equipment.
The agreement would give duty free and quota free access to the EU market in return to liberalisation of their own markets to EU imports.
Because it is imports that are the gain from trade simply announcing that imports into the US will no longer pay duty would mean that the US has free trade.
FORBES: US And EU Free Trade Negotiations: No, This Is An Appalling Idea, Truly Terrible
The North American Free Trade Agreement, approved a decade ago, helped raise Mexico's share of U.S. imports from 7.3% in 1993 to 11.6% in 2002.
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