It’s the same tired trade saga from the New York Times, with one executive asking where we’re “winning” in the textile trade. The question is answered in the article: in the form of lower prices and higher quality across the board. And yet anti-trade zealots steadfastly refuse to acknowledge several facts about trade.
First, lower prices and higher quality are good for consumers. They free up portions of family incomes for other uses. Second, “failure” in one sector is opportunity in another. Shuttered factories mean that resources—capital and labor—can be directed into other lines of production. There can be no “reserve army of unemployed.” In the case of goods, services, and commerce, outsourcing production creates new opportunities in retail and distribution. Third, focusing on how trade affects “regions” misses the point entirely. It’s elevating concern for specific patches of dirt over concern for human welfare. When I buy socks manufactured in China, I am better off, as are the workers who made the socks. To say that this harms a textile worker in Fort Payne, Alabama makes no sense because I am not aggressing against his person or property. Intervention to halt the trade between me and the Chinese sock maker demonstrably harms us both and constitutes unwarranted aggression. The Fort Payne sock maker may be better off, but his bounty comes at the expense of me and my former trading partner.
Finally, those who bear the brunt of transition from autarky to free trade are doing so in part willingly (such as those who steadfastly refuse to move to areas where they know they can find work) and as a result of entrepreneurial error. Putting your entire nest egg in a single stock is unwise—developing process-specific human capital in an industry that is only being propped up by tariffs and protectionism is similarly unwise. Further protectionism only punishes American consumers and foreign workers for American workers’ mistakes.
