We will never know....
Because there is no ACTUAL Free Trade.
If auto assembly (or other) jobs flow to Mexico (or wherever), cost pressures are reduced and auto makers can hold the line on prices. So if 25,000 auto workers used to produce 5 million cars, but producing them in Mexico means a gross savings to car buyers of $1,000 per car, do you want to give $5 billion to the auto workers to save 25,000 jobs? My feeling: Markets send messages and the message here is that looking for jobs in the auto industry may not be a good idea. Personally, giving each auto worker a $200,000 shot in the arm doesn't make sense. If they want to keep their jobs, they need to think about tempering their wage and benefit demands.
Don’t try to tell this to the buggy-whip union crowd here on FR. They will be here in full force any minute to loudly decry Walter Williams as an idiot who doesn’t know anything about economics.
As I recall, the intellectual justification for borderless trade was that we would benefit because Americans would outsource manufacturing “buggywhips” and move along to MORE efficient and productive things which would be a win/win. What we actually got, however, was more and more Americans went from making buggywhips to watching Oprah and the Kardashians and wasting time social networking about the latest Oprah show on Facebook.
NOT.
ping
Every time you speak to an off-shore customer service rep, with ESL, Free Trade rears it's ugly head.
A "free trade" agreement is a one-page document.
A 5,000 page "free trade" agreement is 5,000 pages of exceptions to free trade.
BLA BLA BLA. In a nut shell: JoBS are being exported. B1’s are being imported. Illegal labor is being encouraged and even subsidised. THIS IS WHERE WE ARE. FORGET ALL THIS ECONOMIC THEORY EVERYONE LIKES TO TALK ABOUT.
As long as it’s not my job going overseas, why should I care?
One World One People
Open Borders
Free Trade
KARL MARX.
If anyone ever bothered to do just a little reading they would find that the Idea of Free Trade is and always has been right out of the Communist Manifesto and Karl Marx. Mark spoke and wrote often about his fascination with the idea of Free Trade because it would DESTROY NATIONS FROM WITHIN and eliminate the idea of NATIONS and turn is towards World Socialism.
In order to raise someone up you have to lower someone else.
That seems to be what’s happened, no?
Any statistician can cut the numbers any which way and all of us know about the technical changes etc, etc.
Trump isn't against trade and he isn't xenophobic but there are genuine questions concerning how beneficial the current deals are for the middle class (we know the corps love the status quo).
Losing a job due to outsourcing or losing it to technological innovation produces the same result for an individual: He’s out of a job. The best thing that we can do is to have a robust economy such that he can find another job.
As long as the job that replaced the old job is in the USA, there is no problem, but when the new job is in Communist China.....thats a problem for U.S.
We already subsidize various areas in income more so than china as well. China doesn't try to stabilize the ME, China doesn't patrol the international water ways safe with a Navy like US.
I'd like to see the number when it comes to having a jobs here as opposed to outsourcing and paying other forms of welfare.
Finally, some of the largest proponents of 'free trade' are the ones usually immune to it in the form of academic tenure.
Allow me to add small appliances, tools, equipment, and dozens of other items are barely made in the USA or the number produced here is a fraction of what it was in the past.
Now, Williams is a bright guy, but he misses the obvious point. We should be making these items in the USA also. There is no reason to have surrendered them to overseas producers.
Finally, it is a national security issue for the USA to have a manufacturing base that includes significant production in every class of product.
“The best thing that we can do is to have a robust economy such that he can find another job. “
Lame article.
He doesn’t point out that in the current economy the worker is likely to find a job that pays much less than his previous job. (Or 2 part time jobs is much more likely). Some robust economy.
“Free Trade” is part of a package along with Massive immigration and H1-B visa’s to drive down American wages.
In a consumer economy it doesn’t make much sense to have massive numbers of workers who lack the money to purchase goods and services.
Finally Free Trade is poison at the Ballot Box.
These companies are sending our jobs to Mexico and China where they save bundles on cheap labor then ship the cars etc back to America WITHOUT discounting them. Do you think Carrier ACs or Ford F150’s will cost less now that they’re made in Mexico??
NO they won’t. The shareholders make more money is all and our taxes go up to pay for more unemployment.
Fair Trade?? NOT!! Not even Free Trade because these bad deals cost Americans plenty!
China has tens of millions of people employed for no other purpose than to sell what they make to U. S. Citizens.
This one concept facilitated the rejuvenation of countless Chinese cities. It bloated the coffers of the Chines government. It facilitated the modernization of the Chinese military. It facilitated the move of China into the South China Sea against the objections of other nations that had a claim on the region.
Now folks are asking if this cost U. S. jobs? Tens of millions of Chinese people making things for sale in the U. S., and they can’t figure this one out. Then they denigrate others who can.
Not only did this cost U. S. jobs, it forced folks into lower paying jobs. That’s what happens when tens of millions of jobs move off-shore.
Tens of millions out of work... do we have evidence of that? Yes.
Tens of millions now working in the service sector for less wages. Have we seen that? Yes.
As China becomes a global thread, it will finally increase jobs in the United States. Our military will need more people.
Sooner or later, our citizens will die on the back of the poorest economic polices put in place in world history.
When this all happens, we’ll still see the folks who supported all this denying and blaming others.
We will know it when we see it.
We see it on this very thread.