Yeah, that cheap labor is killing us. Any person with the common sense of an average 12-year-old could see that.
Posted on 11/30/2016 4:52:33 PM PST by bobsunshine
A group of distinguished trade economists have quietly released a paper estimating that if Chinese imports had grown half as quickly over the past 15 years, Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump would be preparing to move into the White House right now.
There’s reason to be skeptical about this specific result, since it focuses on regions harmed by trade with China and doesn’t factor in benefits enjoyed by people elsewhere in the country. Nevertheless, it underscores just how big an impact trade with China has had on the American economy — and on our politics.
For decades, experts have argued that freer trade is good for the US economy and downplayed the economic harms that trade can cause. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump did the opposite, railing against trade with Mexico and China and promising to stop the decline of the manufacturing sector.
To the surprise of many experts, Trump won. And new research suggests that Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he made trade a central theme of his campaign.
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
But he raised the very same issues. Don’t forget he beat a sitting president in a primary back in92
Trump used the same issues that Pat Buchanan used in 2000. He was able to get the media to cover him, which Pat was not
The new media gained considerable power. That is the difference.
Trump was able to make use of the establishment media’s loss of power. He broke the mediacracy, and showed that it can be done.
Many will be following his example.
The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade (PDF)
I read an earlier version of the paper last year. At the time, some economists were calling it the first scholarly paper ever written arguing against free trade. That's not what it is; but it does point out some things that classical free-traders ignore, which cause them to overestimate the benefits of free trade and downplay the problems.
Yes Pat was ahead of the curve. Isn’t that interesting. the public can’t believe what’s happening until it’s nearly too late. Let’s hope it’s not too late
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump did the opposite, railing against trade with Mexico and China and promising to stop the decline of the manufacturing sector.
...
That’s absolutely false. He railed against bad trade deals and cheating, such as currency manipulation.
It takes uber liberal economic illiterates like those at Vox to rail on free trade with China when we don’t have free trade with China.
Guess which one invented the "giant sucking sound."
Trump did no such thing.
He railed against STUPID TRADE DEALS with Mexico and China, negotiated by HACKS.
Trump said a million times he wants all kinds of international trade but with deals that benefit instead of harm America.
Sure. But I think a more balanced approach to trade imbalances has got to be better than the lunacy we see now.
If you don’t have exports, you don’t have industry.
If you don’t have industry, you don’t have jobs.
You don’t have jobs, you don’t collect tax revenues.
Related point is that you may keep strategically important industries onshore, lest your trading partners become your political or military adversaries and you don’t have the plant or knowledge capacity to make the sir you need to kick their ass.
The question is why has it taken the American public so long to get with it? It’kinda like the thing with the Standard American Diet. It’s killing us with overnutrition. But I’ll bet you don’t think it’s a problem yet
Yes, and trade is great if they buy your stuff, too. But why would you open your markets to nations whose markets stay closed to your industries??
That’s the problem, not free trade per se. What we have is not actually free trade, and only by being protectionist when you need to be, will you get there.
Shopped at a Walmart recently? That’s where folks go to find Chinese goods.
Yeah, Perot—that nitwit. He sort of predicted that “sucking sound” of jobs fleeing south, but not the “sucking sound” of people heading north to find jobs.
Why am I part of this?
Yep, you can shop there and get a pair of Levi's 505 jeans that sold for around $15 to $20 during the 1980s when there still were some Levi's apparel plants in the US. Now all Levi's jeans are made in Mexico or elsewhere. Order a new pair of 505s from Walmart. I'm sure, with all the low prices since production was moved to cheap labor nations that they'll be as cheap as in the 1980s, or only slightly higher.
There have always been cheap brands, and there were long before Walmart. But now practically everything is made in cheap labor nations whether it's Levis, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren or Walmart's cheap house brands.
And prices on items that have been sold for years have doubled, tripled and quadrupled while production was being moved to cheap labor nations.
Yeah, that cheap labor is killing us. Any person with the common sense of an average 12-year-old could see that.
Lol, what nonsense. You sort of fail to account for the increase in disposable income from 1929 until 2010. And people buy a lot more different stuff now than in past years. Of course clothing expensitures is a smaller portion of income. How much were people spending on cell phones and computers during all those years?
Hey, take your graph back to the time when many people spun their own thread and weaved their own cloth and stitched their own clothing by hand.
Your graph is laughable and tells us nothing about the price to consumers of specific items of clothing or anything else over a period of time.
Go back far enough and you’ll hit a time when most people spent practically all their time and disposable media of exchange for food, clothing and shelter. And that would be just as relevant, or irrelevant, to my post as your #37.
Disposable income increased despite the loss of apparel making jobs?
And people buy a lot more different stuff now than in past years.
Way back then people spent all their money on clothing? Now people have fewer clothes than in the past?
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