Critique an editorial or commentary from a Texas newspaper

In this article entitled “IN TEXAS, TRADE IS NOT A DIRTY WORD” by: U.S. Senator John Cornyn the author talks about how “free trade” has taken heat in the recent presidential race he then proves this to be wrong by providing evidence of Texas’s usage of free trade as a substantial benefit to the state’s prosperity and its people. The credibility of the author is established by his U.S senator status. He then begins to throw around values and statistics to support his claim of how much of a positive impact free trade can have on everyone,but fails to provide proper citation to where he gets these values and statistics. This dilutes his credibility in the reader's eyes. He makes the claim that trade doesn't just benefit major companies and actually benefits small and family-owned businesses ,but he proceeds to never give any examples of small business positively affected by free trade. His statistics on trade evoke emotional importance , but lack of examples fall flat. He also fails to provide the counter argument or any kind of regression to help strengthen his argument. Without a counter it is hard to prove why free trade is more important than lack thereof. The senator shows Texas to be an example for the right kind of prosperous trade in hopes that the country will follow our example. The author then doesn't show the many differences the nation faces that Texas does not thus weakening his claim. Towards the end of the article the author explains how Texas is a gateway of trade due to its location in relations to Latin America. The author uses this to further exemplify Texas’s trade policies, but fails to show obvious differences that face the nation and other states that do not face Texas.          

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