As ManufactureThis recently noted, the New York Times published a poorly researched endorsement of free trade and current U.S. policy last week.  Authored by professor Steven Landsburg, the editorial suggested that free trade was helping the U.S. economy even if some Americans were falling down the wage scale as a result.

  AAM’s Scott Paul wrote a rebuttal, which the New York Times published on Sunday.  Apparently, Scott wasn’t the only one who found Landsburg’s “Get over it” piece to be both shortsighted and insulting.  The Times was inundated with responses and decided to publish several of the letters.  The ensuing tempest actually became news in itself, with the Korean wire service Yonhap spotting worrisome hints in the letters of roadblocks to a projected U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement.

But the fun didn’t stop there.  A professor from a highly regarded Mid-Atlantic college subsequently criticized Scott Paul’s letter:
“I read with interest your letter in today’s New York Times.  As a professor of international trade I was acutely interested in any study that could show a 50:1 advantage to keeping jobs at home.  Even the most cursory look at the study’s methodology (pages 21-25) reveals grave flaws.  I expect better work from my undergraduates and am frankly surprised that you would go out of your way to draw attention to this research.”

Now, ManufactureThis welcomes an exchange of ideas, and appreciates civilized discourse.  But we’re sometimes a bit irritated by pompous criticism.  So, we took off the gloves and sent a colorful reply to the good professor—which we share with our readers as an antidote to the winter blues:

The great thing about research is that it sometimes allows one to step outside the glass bubble—to put down the textbooks and take a look at the actual, physical world.  So, regarding the study you asked about, we asked some academicians to take a look beyond the campus ivy and see what’s actually taking place in U.S. industry.  What they found was that the net benefits to the U.S. economy of addressing dumping and illegal subsidies outweighed the suggested benefits of lower-cost goods by a 50:1 ratio.

A link to the informational page and entire report can be found at.

Glad to hear from you, and as I understand it, [college name deleted at the insistence of our editors] is one of a number of schools where the professors have spent years working the line at a factory, conducting R&D, and reckoning with the predatory trade practices adopted by China and our other, well-intentioned trading partners.  I’m extremely thankful that free trade advocates, like many of these educators, are incensed by the protectionism utilized by these countries.  How can we have free markets and a free exchange of trade when other countries so wantonly distort the free market?

ManufactureThis does, of course, welcome further debate and discussion.

##

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., 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.