It's great for Apple and its shareholders. It is not so great for American workers.
“Job-creating”> ObamaTrade Requires Subsidies for Displaced U.S. Workers
In a glaring example of Orwellian double-think, ObamaTrade advocates are simultaneously pushing for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, aka "Fast Track") to get the supposedly jobs-creating trade agreements through Congress, and Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) for U.S. workers who lose their jobs because of the agreements. So which is it? Is ObamaTrade going to lose jobs or create jobs? The answer, according to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan and others who support ObamaTrade, is yes — both.
Apparently they believe (or expect voters to believe) that jobs must be lost in order for jobs to be created. Moreover, without government intervention in the marketplace jobs will be lost and created as a result of innovation and consumer preferences. (How many workers make typewriters these days compared to computers?) But does it make sense for the U.S. government to sign treaties that will destroy jobs and then increase government spending to help the displaced workers? How can such an approach end any way but badly?
Remember NAFTA, which was going to create prosperity and jobs for Americans according to its propoents, but which resulted instead in the exportation of jobs? Is it stupidity — or evil, or both — to ignore this lesson from the past while pursuing ObamaTrade?
NAFTA was signed into law in 1993.
Civilian labor force participation rate
