The China Deal: If You Can't Sell It, Buy It

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Tue May 23 11:04:15 PDT 2000



>
>Max, descend from that high horse for just a moment. Breaking unions
>almost always means wage cutting. Lifting environmental and worker
>safety regulations is almost always worker-hurting. Not all trade is
>job-destroying or wage-cutting.
>
>Doug

But Heckscher, Ohlin, Stolper, and Samuelson say that there is a very strong presumption that increased trade is bad for the *scarce* domestic factor of production--which in the case of the U.S. today is labor.

You have to believe very strongly in new growth theory magic--increasing returns of one sort or another somewhere (which, by the way, I do)--to reach the conclusion that increased trade is Pareto-preferable (unless, of course, reduced trade barriers are coupled with increasing social welfare and worker training and education expenditures; which is why Clinton's legitimacy to lead the Democratic Party has been in doubt since he cut off the left hand of his administration; but I degress...)

Brad DeLong



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