“A farrago of fallacies,” Derb? I don’t see any. Nor, as far as I can tell, do you–which is why you find yourself compelled to charge me with an assumption-”If folk in the Caribbean want to immigrate to the U.S., there isn’t a darn thing we can do to stop them”-that a) I never stated, b) do not believe, and c) rejected in earlier postings.

Free trade promotes economic growth among all the parties involved. If we reduced restrictions on sugar imports, Americans would be better off, because the price of sugar would drop and the elaborate, corrupt political structure that has for decades now sought to maintain the restrictions would collapse. Call that the first order effect.

But there would also be a second order effect, namely that incomes in the Caribbean would rise, with the result that fewer people would feel tempted to try to enter this country illegally and that we could therefore devote correspondingly fewer resources to preventing them from doing so. Once again, in other words, Americans would be better off.

As for your suggestion that free trade would make “the prosperity of Caribbean folk” the “concern” of our government–well, what you have there really is a fallacy. Free trade involves freedom. Permitting Americans to buy their sugar from any source they chose would no more involve the government in worrying about the welfare of people in the Caribbean than permitting free speech involves the government in worrying about the production of newspapers and books. The government would simply stand aside to let Americans trade as they wish.