Free Trade, the Leftist Issue and the Truth

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Free enterprise and capitalism are being attacked by both presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both say they are for “free trade” but are against free trade deals negotiated over the past three decades by the United States. Those trade deals have benefited American consumers, all of them in a macro sense, to the tune of billions of dollars in savings and benefits.

A few Americans have lost jobs in the process in a micro sense. They did not lose their lives, they weren’t taken out and shot like the farmers murdered by Russian Communists in the Ukraine that objected to losing their private farms to the government and/or working on government farms for an equal share of the proceeds in the great communist scheme of life. In the largest sense, the number of lost jobs to trade over the past 30 years is infinitesimal. For example, in the first 20 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a documented 50,000 jobs a year were lost. By contrast, two and-a-half million jobs are lost in the average 18-month recession since 1946.

What free trade critics never mention is the jobs allegedly lost to trade relative to the number of jobs that are created by trade. Over time, certain jobs classifications are more affected than others. Manufacturing, for example. Though fewer Americans work in manufacturing, the U.S. is producing more manufactured goods with fewer people. Technology and automation are responsible. At the same time, when trade grows so do attendant jobs. The United States Chamber of Commerce estimates 14 million people work in trade with Canada and Mexico alone. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars estimates six million in trade with Mexico alone.......To Read More....

My Take - I think reading the comments is worth your time.  I will be the first to admit I've been ambivalent about all of this.  In principle I like the idea of free trade, but the reality of those agreements concern me.   The degree of uncertainty is high for me and I think for most others.