I am very afraid about this narrow point of view about US worker, the real questions is: "how many people had their life improved or worsened all over the world." Maybe it improved the life of many more Chinese than it did worsen that of people from the rest of the world, that would be a net gain. There is a bright side: lower cost tool become accessible to poor countries, and China is using its money to invest in abandoned Africa. (I'm not sure it's a net gain, but looking at American workers is certainly not the way to evaluate the situation)
> Ask any economist what issue they agree on, and the first answer you’re likely to hear is “free trade is good.” The general public disagrees vehemently, but economists are almost unanimous on this point.<p>I've never heard an economist claim free trade will lead to lower unemployment. I've heard that it will lead to more efficient markets. But efficiency != equality, and its completely possible the gains go to the top while the losses go to the bottom.
I think the same effects will be seen when automation really starts hitting. Net gains will go to a few while many people will end up unemployed, with the overall effect on society being potentially negative due to higher unemployment.<p>That's why initiatives like basic salary, pioneered now in Finland and also seemingly by Y Combinator - are so important.<p>Also I think huge opportunities are missed by not focusing on retraining people to industries where they can add value.<p>Freely available high quality education/(re)training across all age groups will pay itself back many times over.
You cannot make decisions in a vacuum. If the US did not engage in free trade with China, and instead placed high taxes on Chinese manufactured goods then Russia or the EU would have led the electronics and people-intensive manufacturing companies. Can you imagine Apple trying to compete states side? Impossible. Global US market share would have plummeted.<p>Did engaging in free trade with China negatively impact low-skill workers? Absolutely. But the answer to that is not to try to stop competition, it's to create more training programs and wealth redistribution. Furthermore, there are _plenty_ of jobs China can't take (construction, fruit picking, etc) but instead of wages for those jobs going up, America allowed Mexican workers (illegals, temporary foreign workers, and low skill legal migrants) to compete with an already over competing sector of the American workforce.<p>When farmers would remark that "Americans don't want these jobs" that is such a load of bullshit. Of course Americans want those jobs. They just don't want them at $5/hour. What should have been allowed to happen is that supply and demand should have done their thing and there would have been many hard, but good paying, low skill jobs in America.
Free trade is good for the collective world, but has negative effects locally and regionally.<p>That's why free trade agreements are so hard to negotiate, they screw people in one place while benefiting others in another place.<p>China, and the world, are better off, but tell that to the guy who has to feed his family but he lost his job as a manager at a factory in New Jersey. Not exactly easy to do.
I once had an angry argument on reddit about the whole "globalization is reducing world poverty" thing.<p>I find this argument to be a very weird one. How can you compromise your own citizens for the sake of other countries, while you obviously have no power over their course in history? What sort of government compromises the well-being of its citizens and the health of its economy for the benefit of other countries ? Since when does international trade regulations involve plain altruism and sacrificing your own?<p>What shocks is how you can still find many videos of Milton Friedman defending free trade, but to that point it almost sound like propaganda. I vividly remember that video when he went into a big asian city while praising the free market.<p>For example, seeing how much electronics are built in China, what is preventing the Chinese government to put heavy tariffs on those exports? I guess China doesn't have a monopoly on electronics, but I'm still a little curious.
I don't think that anybody ever claimed that free trade was going to be a Pareto improvement[1]. It is going to nearly always be a Kaldor-Hicks[2] improvement, though, which means you <i>can</i> make everybody better off by doing free trade then taxing the free trade winners and giving the money to the free trade losers.<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency</a><p>[2]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaldor%E2%80%93Hicks_efficiency" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaldor%E2%80%93Hicks_efficienc...</a>
Both the post's title and the linked article's thesis aren't supported by the evidence. The article first proclaims the unanimous agreement among economists about the benefits of free trade. It then dives into the details of <i>one</i> study who seems to contradict this consensus, and then proclaims that no real consensus exists, and even if it did exist, it's wrong.<p>2 things:<p>First, a couple of economists disagreeing with the mainstream, among the thousands of economic researchers, does not break a consensus. If we were to wait for unanimous agreement before embarking on any policy, we would never get anywhere. As the author himself admitted, there is a very strong and prevelent belief among economists that free trade is good for America and for the world in general. That should be good enough, despite a few dissenters believing differently.<p>Second, the study linked does not disagree with the consensus at all! All the study claims, is that a small portion of the population has not benefited from free trade. With any substantive public policy, this will <i>always</i> be the case. Imagine if California declared tomorrow that only people who've lived in CA for 5 years can work as programmers. Such a policy would be horrendously bad for Americans and Californians in general. But it sure would make life great for a small number of unemployed programmers who are currently living in California.<p>And so it is with free trade as well. It may benefit some and not benefit others, but the overall economic benefits far outweigh the costs, both for Americans and for the world in general. Even when considering those not benefiting from globalization, we can and should help them better by using the increased economic rewards that come from free trade, to build a better social safety net and education/training program for the unemployed. That would the positive step forward, not walking down the destructive path of protectionism.
Free-trade moved manufacturing over seas, but the types of industry that grew domestically required fewer workers with greater skill sets.<p>Free trade has certainly caused problems, but domestic efficiency improvements have exaggerated those problems.
This is pure bogus. Without free trade with China most of today's smartphones would simply be too expensive, in the reach of only 1% of the people (yeah, that number is taken out of my a.s, but you get the idea). With no smart-phones there would be no "unicorns", there would be less profits for FB, Google and Apple itself.<p>And there's also the fact that you cannot "price in" into any economic equations the improvement in life conditions brought in to the general public by the use of smart-phones.<p>Economics as a science needs a total re-think, or at least they should tone down their end-of-the-world statements.
Article is interesting for the part it leaves out. Unions essentially inflated the cost of labor so much that doing the work in another country and shipping it across an entire ocean before redistributing it to various points across the country was CHEAPER that manufacturing it closer to the central point of domestic delivery.<p>That is the point that always gets left out. Cause and effect is a very real thing.<p>EDIT: This was apparently controversial. Voted up quickly and voted all the way back down at the same speed.