Our unemployed is much larger then 12.5 million they just don’t count the people who dropped off the roles.
Even if you double it, though, you still don’t get to 28.7 million. They are talking about the job losses that are attributed to this. They don’t take into account the jobs that have been created in other areas.
Imports create jobs here as well as there. We make things here that we could not make but for the stuff that we import from there. We have sales jobs here that exist because of imports. Without oil imports from Mexico and elsewhere, there would be no auto industry in the US, and a much lower standard of living. But for auto parts that we import from overseas, we would probably not be able to make the autos we make here. Same with just about everything we make.
We import things, yes, but we also export things. That’s what trade is all about. We’ve got something they want, they’ve got something we want. If we trade, we are both better off.
Having said that, I would agree that our trade policy is poorly managed by Washington. That’s par for the course. It’s government. But I don’t think you can make a blanket statement that we are worse off because of international trade.
Economists will tell you that the two things that have really contributed to the growth of the US economy since WWII are the growth of technology, and the growth of international trade, not necessarily in that order. But for those two things, we would probably have had no economic growth at all since WWII.