In today’s New York Times, commentator Steven Landsburg suggests that displaced American workers are “churlish” to critique the trade policies that have sent their manufacturing jobs (and millions others) overseas.  In Landsburg’s view “What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.” 

Unfortunately, Mr. Landsburg  hasn’t followed his assumption with a critical study of the facts.  AAM’s ‘Enforcing the Rules’ study (released last year) took a hard look at the impact of trade-related market distortions across 10 different U.S. industries — from steel and shrimp to furniture, cement, and raspberries.  What AAM found was striking—that there is, on average, a 50 to 1 economic advantage in keeping jobs in the U.S. through penalties on illegally subsidized or dumped imports.  Any slight increase in consumer prices was more than offset by the economic activity that wages, business, and profits contributed to the economy. 

And so, contrary to Mr. Landsburg’s “get over it” logic, the correct course for the U.S and its workers should be to strengthen domestic manufacturing, enforce fair trade laws, and, with those steps, allow more Americans to share in the benefits of the global economy.  To do otherwise is to court continuous borrowing from overseas and encourage the market-distorting practices that are now roiling world markets.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Enforcing Trade Laws, AAM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.