Free trade is supposed to be a win-win situation. You sell me your televisions, I sell you my software, and we both prosper. In practice, free-trade agreements are messier than that.【F1】 Since all industries crave (热望) foreign markets to expand into but fear foreign competitors breaking into their home market, they lobby their governments to tilt the rules in their favor. Usually,this involves manipulating tariffs and quotas. But, of late, a troubling twist in the game has become more common, as countries use free-trade agreements to rewrite the laws of their trading partners. Why does the U.S. insist on these rules?【F2】 Quite simply, American drug, software, and media companies are furious about the pirating of their products, and are eager to extend the monopolies that their patents and copyrights confer. Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can prevent competition and can limit what economists call "increased innovation"—innovations that build, in some way, on others. It also encourages companies to use patents as tools to keep competitors from entering new markets.【F3】 Finally, it limits consumers" access to valuable new products: without patents, we wouldn"t have many new drugs, but patents also drive prices of new drugs too high for many people in developing countries. The trick is to find the right balance, insuring that entrepreneurs and inventors get sufficient rewards while also maximizing the well-being of consumers. History suggests that after a certain point tougher intellectual property rules yield diminishing returns. The U.S., in its negotiations, insists on a one-size-fits-all approach: stronger rules are better.【F4】 But accepting a diverse range of intellectual-property rules makes more sense, especially in light of the different economic challenges that developing and developed countries face. Lerner"s study found that the benefits of stronger patent laws were reduced in less developed countries. And developing countries, being poorer, obviously have more to gain from shorter patent terms for foreign innovations, since that facilitates the spread of new technology and the diffusion of ideas. 【F5】 The great irony is that the U.S. economy in its early years was built in large part on a loose attitude toward intellectual-property rights and enforcement. Free-trade agreements that export our own restrictive intellectual property laws may make the world safe for Pfizer, Microsoft, and Disney, but they don"t deserve the name free trade.

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问答题 【F5】