Free Trade

When I hear presidential candidates or outspoken locals protest free trade I shudder. Recently, they NYT rode to my rescue in an editorial.

Suppose the critics are right and all those workers were displaced by cheap imports and factories moving overseas. Those lost manufacturing jobs — an average of 400,000 a year — amount to less than 3 percent of the 15 million jobs lost each year across the economy. Meanwhile, about 17 million jobs were created annually, which is why the unemployment rate at the end of 2007 was not much different than it was at the end of 1997.

So much for 'blaming NAFTA', or Bush, or Republicans, eh?

Anyway...

Much later the Times asserts: "increased trade since World War II has added about 10 percent to American national income". Fine. Free trade has been a staple of American foreign policy since the birth of our nation (mixed with fits of protectionism which often made things worse). We've fought wars over it, and engaged in several smaller conflicts over it.

Woodrow Wilson was the first modern advocate of it on the world stage. His ideas failed via Versailles. Which is why 'free trade' had to wait until after WWII as the Times notes.