Support for Free Trade Plummets
On October 2, 2010, the Wall Street Journal ran an article detailing the results of the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. The article was entitled "Americans Sour on Trade," but what Americans are really souring on is free trade: 53% of Americans now say that free trade agreements have hurt the United States, with less than 10% saying they have helped. The tea party is even more opposed to free trade than the general public, with 61% of tea party supporters saying that free trade agreements have hurt America.
And anti-free trade sentiment is building: in 2007, 46% of Americans said that free trade agreements have hurt the country, and in 1999 the figure was only 32%. A decade of outsourcing of professional jobs has dramatically eroded the support of wealthier Americans for free trade, with 50% of those earning over $75,000 per year now saying that free trade hurts the U. S., up from 24% in 1999. And both 83% of blue-collar workers and 95% of professionals and managers cited outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries as a factor in America's current economic downturn; no other factor was cited more.
Of course, the people are right. As Paul Craig Roberts has tersely noted, "The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried six feet under." Unfortunately, the consensus of our bipartisan elite in favor of free trade remains strong. But at least the American electorate is no longer buying that particular bill of goods.
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Good news indeed - hopefully popular sentiment will help to counter the pro-free trade ideology in the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Tom, I'd like to see fair trade, not free trade.
"Free Trade" has harmed ALL parties involved. Canada's economy is much less debt-laden than the United States's, but the country's business infrastructure is now largely in the hands of international conglomerates... headquartered in the U.S. This makes the Great White North vulnerable to political absorption by its monstrous pieuvric neighbor. Its only hope is to listen to Stephen Harper and beef up the military... fast. And pursue closer ties with the Commonwealth.
Meanwhile, Mexican subsistence farmers cannot possibly compete with the vast Anglo-American factory farm machinery and are driven out of farming. So they migrate northward to Los Angeles, El Paso, Chicago and beyond, in search of work.
I believe it was Ross Perot, flake though he was, who rightly scolded Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush for constating that "free trade" with Mexico would improve the Mexican economy and lessen the "need" for workers to migrate to the U.S. Perot pointed out that the factories the companies outsourced would likely be constructed as close to the U.S. border as possible to keep transport costs down, and that Mexican workers, able to get much higher wages just north, would have ample motivation and opportunity to jump across. NAFTA, then, would if anything INcrease illegal immigration.
The results for the U.S. are too well-known to deal with here. Regarding China, though, the problem goes beyond "free trade" and "tariffs," as the more protectionist Continental European countries are in the same boat as the U.S. vis-à-vis the P.R.C.
The thing is, the U.S. or Europe could still put a tight rein on China if they wanted. If China closed her markets to us, that would be a nuisance but not he end of the world. If America or Europe closed her markets to China, that could destroy their economy.
"Constating"? Someone has lived too long in France. ALthough it is included in the OED as "rare," I don't think I have never before run across constate in English.
#3
Mr. Nicholas Moses must have an excellent memory if he is able to recall a Ross Perot speech from that long ago. How does one remember the substance of a politician's speech from what must be twenty years ago?
Ross Perot was (is) a memorable character. How well I can remember his infomercials with the graphs about how the dollar has sunk without the gold link from that memorable election. But I guess you werent alive to see the 1992 Election.
Absolute free trade tears at the social fabric of most nations, including the United States. The "little platoons" that Edmund Burke wrote about have been cast aside by the whirlwinds of absolute free trade as has been proved from towns as disparate as Youngstown, Ohio and Birmingham, England. That is why Karl Marx was a vigorous supporter of free trade. Marx delighted in the destruction of traditional societies. So, too, do many libertarian thinkers, ideologues who worship gods like Smith, von Mises and Hayek and who exalt in "creative destruction.". Perhaps the American people have finally awaken to what is happening to them. But the elites in both parties are formidable, have great wealth, and monopolize the media. They will be difficult to defeat.