Decades after the US embraced free trade, it’s clear who the losers are
American workers haven’t fared so well in the era of globalisation
It’s not the bias in the media that really matters, but the things they know about, but don’t tell you that really matter. US$750 a month, Netflix and air conditioning. That’s all that’s left and all that you will ever have in the future if you are unemployed, poor, without career prospects and over 40 years old in the US. And you’re probably living in your car stranded at the vast parking lot of a mega-retailer.
...they have only enhanced corporate and financial profits at the price of American workers
I used to fervently support free trade agreements, until I took a realistic look at the numbers and consequences. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) cost US workers almost 700,000 jobs. Since the South Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, America’s trade deficit with South Korea has grown more than 80 per cent. That’s equivalent to a drain of more than 70,000 additional US jobs.
Since China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, the US goods trade deficit with China increased US$23.9 billion (7.5 per cent) to US$342.6 billion. However, trade deals fail to deal with currency manipulation or to effectively address labour standards. Ultimately, they have only enhanced corporate and financial profits at the price of American workers.
The swelling populist anger in the US assured that Donald Trump seized the Republican nomination. Aiming towards the Presidency, he could continue as the Darth Vader of the politically incorrect aiming his racial alienation beyond Muslims and Mexican-Americans.
Or he could morph into a conventional Republican, forgetting about his anti-free trade threats and the insidious Beltway lobbyists without the incendiary racist, narcissistic, psycho-sexual and self-promotional convulsions. Trump hits out, “On trade, America First means the American worker will have his or her job protected from unfair foreign competition. We’re going to put America back to work. We’re going to make our own products”.
Current and future top policy makers need to cultivate some economic sense during their governing terms. They need to understand how poor economic judgements and decisions reverberate through the fabric of time and history. Let’s step into a time machine consider the following economic blunder committed by Winston Churchill in the 1920s.