It’s interesting to see how editors and economists slice up the latest economic data.  Today’s Chicago Tribune offers a “Pennsylvania Primer” on NAFTA that misrepresents some of the concerns Americans have about lost U.S. manufacturing. 

The problems with NAFTA boil down to jobs—namely, the loss of many good-paying middle class jobs.  According to the Tribune’s editorial, the CATO Institute’s Dan Ikenson considers an annual loss of 100,000 factory jobs to be acceptable.  Ironically, the recent manufacturing job toll is far greater, and one wonders if the 58,000 factory jobs lost in January alone might worry them.

And while the Tribune trumpets a 58% increase in U.S. factory output over the past 13 years, it’s equally important to consider that the U.S. trade deficit jumped more than tenfold in the same time. 

The real question is why the rest of the world isn’t buying U.S. products.  If they were, the U.S. trade deficit wouldn’t vastly outstrip increased domestic productivity. 

A more accurate Pennsylvania primer might be the state’s 207,400 manufacturing jobs lost since 2000, many of them due to illegal competition from countries like China that cheat on trade agreements.

The Chicago Tribune can praise NAFTA all it wants, but it needs to be consistent.  Espousing free trade should mean rebuking China for the protectionism it practices, not just rejection criticism of NAFTA.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., Enforcing Trade Laws. 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.