Toward a New Washington Consensus on Trade

By David Sirota, Creators Syndicate. Posted May 16, 2008.

When will U.S. politicians recognize that NAFTA is bad for everyone?

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David Sirota is the bestselling author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government -- and How We Can Take It Back" (Crown, 2006). He is a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network -- both nonpartisan research organizations. His daily blog can be found at www.credoaction.com/sirota. To find out more about David Sirota and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Free Trade benefits only a few. [Report this comment] Posted by: yellow on May 17, 2008 2:18 PM Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] Of the $500 billion to $1 trillion increase in income from free trade and investment liberalization in the US most accrued to the very richest Americans and corporations as the real national median income has steadily declined over the same period. Economist Alan Blinder has estimated that about 40 million service jobs in the US face outsourcing competition in places like India and other low wage countries accounting for close to 30% of all US jobs. Still, tariffs are the wrong approach. At this point most of the jobs that have gone overseas, most of which are final stage assembly jobs in manufacturing, won't return to the US job market. It is impossible to reverse globalization. The only truely viable approach is to steer the US economy in a direction that redistributes income, creates full employment, funds needed services like universal health care and creates energy efficiency and environmental protection with fossil fuel reducing alternatives and investment in urban mass transit. Tariffs will only create inflation if they spur investment in domestic consumer goods production at all. There is already trillions of dollars worth of manufacturing output produced in the US annually. This cannot resolve the problem of economic stagnation and unemployment. This is because the US manufacturing sector is highly capital intensive using only a fraction of the labor it once used. Only 10% of the US labor force is employed in manufacturing down from a peak in the mid-1950s of one-third. In addition, real US manufacturing wages, though above the average, are not growing very fast. The solution is create a new, definancialized US economy. Only this approach will mitigate the negative effects of globalization. [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] Free trade benefits those who have marketable goods and/or skills. [Report this comment] Posted by: ABetterFuture on May 18, 2008 10:42 PM Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] No, it does not benefit everyone. Gads. Imagine not appeasing every last person in your personal, ego-driven, imaginative view of how you would like your subjects to behave. The nerve of some people with frontal lobe activity! Bastards and anti-statists! All of them. Point us to some torches and piles of books. They should not be allowed to get away with such antiestablishmentariansim. ;) [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] » Apparently, not even they benefit since there are fewer and fewer Most were eliminated by Free Trade Posted by: yellow

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» Apparently, not even they benefit since there are fewer and fewer Most were eliminated by Free Trade Posted by: yellow