Free trade has been great for working people, offering them food, appliances, vehicles, all sorts of things at remarkably low prices.
What failed was everything else. A factory closing shouldn't mean your family is doomed to poverty. In civilized countries with strong social policies, it doesn't.
What failed was everything else. A factory closing shouldn't mean your family is doomed to poverty. In civilized countries with strong social policies, it doesn't.
Reposted from
Congressman Jared Golden
🧵It was never going to be easy or painless to overturn decades of free-trade policies that have failed working people, but we have to think in years, not days.
Comments
...is that NOT having that trade, ie isolationism, is not just worse for us, but is also hoarding money from the global poor/developing countries. Open trade lets other nations in on the wealth. Not perfectly, but better than hoarding.
We can be free trade and pro-worker, we can subsidize industrialization at home while protecting against IP theft abroad, we can mitigate jobs & industries disappearing with targeted tariffs while investing in jobs & industries of the future.
🇺🇸 poverty appeared to be going down after NAFTA, but it pops up toward 15% during major recessions & gop admins and drops again during dem admins
Americans vote to increase it every few years
Good job 🇺🇸
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf
Also see JD Vance's hometown after the collapse of the American steel industry.
Is Dani Rodrik already here?