“How does a political party ship a job overseas?”
The party uses political power to enact laws and regulations that discourage investment in the United States. The investment goes to other nations. Jobs follow investment.
An example is the textile and apparel industry. In response to the threat of Asian apparel imports wiping out the US textile industry, as well as illegal immigration from unemployed people in this hemisphere, the Reagan administration and Congress enacted legislation in the In the 1980’s allowing US manufacturers to ship US produced fabric to factories in Central America and the Caribbean basin to be sewn. The sewn products, as long as they were made with 100% US made fabrics and trims (buttons, labels, zippers), were allowed back into the US duty free. These products were cost competitive with Asia under the tariff structure at the time, allowed US textile workers to keep their jobs making yarn and fabric, and provided low skill jobs for tens of thousands of western hemisphere workers in third world countries.
Under the Clinton and two Bush administrations, quotas and tariffs were eliminated on Chinese imports of apparel and the requirement that Central American sewing factories use US fabric to bring in goods duty free was eliminated. The US textile industry collapsed, Asian imports swelled, hundreds of thousands of US jobs were lost, illegal immigration from Central America into the US increased. Prices for basic apparel did not decrease.
This is a real life example of how the free trade policies of both political parties send jobs overseas. The same results have occurred in many consumer products industries, the furniture industry, and many industrial product categories.
I have yet to see an economic study that demonstrates the free trade policies of the 1990’s and 2000’s have resulted in a net economic benefit to the economy of the United States. Instead we’ve seen a decline in the standard of living of the average family, the evisceration of our once world leading industrial infrastructure, swarms of low skilled immigrants into the US, and the rise of China as an economic and military power to rival the US. The economic benefits flowed to the Wall Street bankers who facilitated the shifting of capital from the US to Asia.
Despite the failure of these free trade policies our political parties continue to pursue them.
I would suggest spending less time at Brookings, EPI, and Public Citizen and more time at Heritage, Cato, etc.