St Louis Fed's Poole on free trade

"I believe that the general voting public will be more likely to favor free-trade policies if it understands the issues at a deeper level," Poole told the Reuters Trade, Globalization and Outsourcing Conference.

"One set of reservations concerns distributional effects of free trade. Workers are not seen as benefiting from free trade," Poole said in prepared remarks.

"A key reason why the general public is reluctant to embrace free trade is that many do not understand the benefits," and that is because they do not understand interactions between markets, Poole said.

"There is an enormous opportunity here: sound and impartial reporting case by case will do more, I believe, to promote free-trade policies than all the economists' speeches extolling the benefits of trade laid end to end," Poole said.

To read past central bank speeches use our Speech Finder. Click the link on the right.

Speech by William Poole, President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis at the Trade, Globalization and Outsourcing Conference, Reuters America Inc. New York, 15 June 2004.

Click here to read the speech "Free Trade: Why are Economists and Noneconomists So Far Apart?" on the St Louis Fed's web site