Re: (Blinder 2) More on the anti-globalization trend.



On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, alexy wrote:

Straydog <asd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I just posted excerpts from a recent WSJ article on Alan Blinder who now
thinks globalization isn't working.

You mean the article that said that "Mr. Blinder... remains an
implacable opponent of tariffs and trade barriers."

Looks like you missed the forest for the trees. How about this:

--------

"Politicians heeded this advice and, with occasional dissents, steadily dismantled barriers to trade. Yet today Mr. Blinder has changed this message--helping lead a growing band of economists and policy makers who say the downsides of trade in today's economy are deeper than they once realized."

----

Where it is clear that he has "changed his message" and see more harm than they thought would come. And, how about the real main point:

-----

"...now he is saying loudly that a new industrial revolution...will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decades or two."

----

And, the part that reveals that some economists never even bought into free trade:

-------
"Harvard economist Dani Rodrik says global trade negotiations should
focus on erecting new barriers against globalization, not lowering them,
to help poor nations build domestic industries and give rich nations more
time to retrain workers."
---

And, here it is clear that Blinder is changing his mind. Will he change more of his views in another few years?

-------
"At Princeton, he [Blinder] began to reassess some of his views on trade."

He began "...to wonder if the technology that allowed English-speaking workers in India to do the jobs of American workers at lower wages was 'a good thing' for many Americans."

In a paper he wrote, he made an estimate that between 42 and 56 million jobs could be moved out of the USA.

-------
Didn't sound to me like he was saying it wasn't working, but rather
was cautioning that the side effects in the form of displacements in
our economy would be much more dramatic than previously thought, and
would require more dramatic solutions than just "retraining programs".

When the guy is talking about 30% of the jobs being at risk of being exported, the guy is talking about serious damage to our economy; if you want to "soften it up" with "reserved rhetoric" --as if you are in cahoots with all the spinmeisters out there trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes--then I'll add that you are in fantasy land or liar land, or both.

And, on top of that, you missed from "blinder.2" the following important historical commentary about the reason given for promoting free trade:

----
"Free trade in decades past wasn't sold so much on the economics but as a
way to acheive a foreign-policy end.

Even its most fervent admirers concede trade creates winners and losers.

[FDR]'s secretary of state, Cordell Hull, led the pre-World War II effort
to lower tariffs because he believed trade led to peace. After World War
II, the European Union was created to avoid another war between France and
Germany, and the U.S. pursued trade deals to win the Cold War. And, while
President Bill Clinton talked loudly about the jobs the [NAFTA] would
create, his Treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, saw the trade pact as a way to assure a pro-U.S. regime in Mexico."

"'Today,' says Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College trade historian, 'there is
no major foreign-policy reason to be for trade.' For some reason, few in the
U.S. see trade with China as a foreign-policy tool to influence that rising
power...."
-------------------

And, yes, the majority of the blather in the media is along the lines of "this benefits everyone" and if anyone talks about the displaced ones, then the dogma "well, those guys can retrain" as if its as simple as that.



.

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