You would think the editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine would know better than this:
It's an odd situation: Free-trade negotiations are crashing, one after another, but at the same time, free trade itself is booming.
The last time official trade negotiators had reason to feel good was in 1994, when 125 nations agreed on a significant drop in trade barriers and the creation of a body charged with supervising and liberalizing international trade -- the World Trade Organization. Since then, efforts to liberalize trade through multilateral negotiations have stalled. In many countries, free-trade agreements are now politically radioactive, with imports routinely blamed for job losses, lower salaries, heightened inequality, and, more recently, even poisoned toothpaste and deadly medicines...Meanwhile, world trade continued to grow at a breakneck pace. In 2006, the volume of global merchandise exports grew 15 percent, while the world economy grew at a 3.7 percent rate. In 2007, the growth in world trade is again expected to outstrip the growth rate of the global economy. This sustained, rapid pace of trade growth has led to a more than fivefold increase of inter-regional trade in goods between 1980 and 2005. For an unprecedented number of countries, rich and poor alike, strong export growth is boosting overall economic performance.
So, what explains the surging trade flows? The short answer is technology and politics.
Notice what's missing in that next to last sentence? The word "free." That's because this "paradox" really isn't a paradox at all. Trade is surging. Free trade agreements are not. Thus, what is necessarily booming is trade, but not necessarily "free" trade. Why this should be paradoxical is unclear.
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