I think Alex has been a little too rash in dismissing Daniel Larison’s point on free trade. Larison writes, further:
Economists who bother to answer them make it very clear that these policies are geared toward consumers and an economy built around consumption, and the American firms it primarily benefits are exporters of raw materials and sellers of imported junk. Of course, that doesn’t settle anything, but raises a host of new questions about whether we should continue down that path.
I take Larison to be arguing that free trade leads to a certain type of economy, where certain types of industries and actors reap the biggest gains. If that’s the case, it’s no good to flippantly say, as Alex does, that free trade leads to “American prosperity”. Because prosperity obviously depends on your metrics. Free trade benefits some more than others. It indisputably hurts, in the short term, some American workers by killing their jobs, and forcing them into new lifestyles and careers, sometimes very late in life. That has a cost too, and it doesn’t always show up in the balance sheet. If you’re a conservative and you care about the individual, you shouldn’t be wholly satisfied with “but, it helps America innovate, and prosper, and prepare for new economic challenges”. This sort of tendency to take an extremely broad view of things- on assumption- often diminishes conservatism’s ability to appeal to the public, and it seems to me that a conservative who believes in free trade- and I’m much closer to Alex then to Larison here- needs to figure out how to address two realities. 1.) Free trade, while providing net benefits to most Americans, has real and meaningful costs to some Americans. 2.) There are costs to policies, that aren’t immediately evident in conventional economic calculations.
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Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com
March 14th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
[...] tends to add a dash of nativism and distrust of foreigners’ motives). And here again, I find Matthew’s light defense of Mr. Larison’s argument to suffer from the same sort of [...]
March 14th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
[...] tends to add a dash of nativism and distrust of foreigners’ motives). And here again, I find Matthew’s light defense of Mr. Larison’s argument to suffer from the same sort of [...]
March 14th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Good post Matthew. As I’ve stated before, I also do not believe most people think through all of the national security implications of a free trade policy based solely on economics. There are scores of ways by which the enemies and/or terrorist could cripple us as a country without ever firing a shot or igniting a bomb. I’m afraid people don’t let themselves think through all of these things because it leads to conclusions they have not heretofore held.
By being from a manufacturing background its more evident to see how they could kill our economy in a very short time, but its too complex to explain very well.
March 14th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Obama says US economy sound
Wonder where I heard that before? John McCain maybe six months ago and dissed for it in the media then.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
[...] Knepper offers one response that amounts to little, and then complains that one of his colleagues gave this post any consideration at all. In the second response, he resorts to the globalist equivalent [...]