Free trade loses lustre

The Sunday Times ^ | February 29, 2004

[sarcasm]

WASHINGTON: Free trade is losing support in the US, in particular among high-income Americans, as more professionals feel threatened by job outsourcing to low-wage nations.

A recent poll by a Washington research group found falling support for free trade but the shift was most dramatic among those earning more than $US100,000 ($A130,000) a year.

The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found the percentage of those earning more than $US100,000 who actively supported free trade slid from 57 per cent in 1999 to 28 per cent in January 2004.

These results surprised even the researchers.

"It is rare in any case that any demographic slice drops 20 or 30 points on any issue," said research director Clay Ramsay.

"It certainly provides evidence for the theory that job insecurity is creeping up the income scale."

The poll showed more white-collar Americans joining the blue-collar outcry against globalisation and cast a cloud on the ability of the US to remain a leader in free trade. It also suggested protectionist talk would rise during the presidential election campaign.

But researchers said the results showed a majority of Americans endorsed free trade in principle, even if they believed it was being handled poorly by Washington.

"Feelings about international trade have gone from lukewarm, to luker," said PIPA director Steven Kull.

"Two-thirds say they support the reciprocal lowering of trade barriers but feel more needs to be done to mitigate the effects on workers and the environment." But the trend towards outsourcing of software and engineering jobs to countries such as India had led to a rethink of the benefits.

Senator Charles Schumer wrote recently in the New York Times that free trade had to be reconsidered in light of new economic realities, notably that much of the outsourcing was going to "a relatively few countries with abundant cheap labour".

"When American companies replace domestic employees with lower-cost foreign workers to sell more cheaply in home markets, it seems hard to argue this is the way free trade is supposed to work," Senator Schumer wrote.

[Paul Ross]

In fact, it establishes that Marx preferred protectionism with regard to the free movement of capital.

I don't see that 'preference' at all. He explicitly 'favors' free trade, whatever his caveats:

"...the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade. "--Karl Marx

[Paul Ross]

You're assuming of course, that .27 cents an hour is a bad wage there.

I don't need to assume that. And even if it were a 'good wage' there, it would be because of a communist government-designed and created, artificially-generated state of general poverty among the population. And the wage is fixed. Why does it need to be set in concrete if China is truly becoming 'freer'???? The fact is, they aren't.

The rulers, the communist party, are making sure that their 'economic black-hole' designed to suck in the U.S. technology and industry stays attractive.

And those low wages are also fixed SO THAT they can't afford our stuff, and become a real middle class in their own country...and a threat to the Communist Party. It is fixed so that they WILL BUY only their own stuff, to further aggregate all the manufacturing power into their own country...and keep us out. Any sharp stick they can poke in the eye of the U.S. or monkey wrench into our economy, they will wield.