Trump’s trade fantasies would only hurt ordinary Americans at job prospects
Republican US presidential nominee Donald Trump’s protectionist trade proposals are unlikely to help displaced workers in the manufacturing industry, and there’s no doubt that US consumers, including Trump supporters, will get hurt by Trump’s anti- trade measures, experts have said.
Trump has broken from the longstanding Republican orthodoxy in favor of free trade and embraced a protectionist trade stance throughout his presidential campaign, trying to appeal to angry and frustrated blue- collar voters who have seen manufacturing jobs lose in an increasing global economy.
In a speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, Trump promised to be the voice of those “laid- off factory workers” hit hard by what he called the “horrible and unfair trade deals,” and make “fair trade” a central theme of his presidency if elected.
Trump also vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA) and other existing major trade deals, and promised to never sign massive trade agreements like the Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP), which he said would “destroy” US manufacturing.
“I am going to bring back our jobs to Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and New York, and Michigan and to all of America – and I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequence,” he said.
But experts said that the decline in US manufacturing employment is a natural phenomenon and blaming trade agreements for the job destruc- tion misrepresents what is actually happening.
“There is a long- term trend for manufacturing employment in the US to decline as a share of employment. This reflects the fact that automation and productivity growth are easier in manufacturing than in services,” said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former official of the World Bank.
“The US is still a manufacturing powerhouse from the point of view of production, but it simply does not take that many workers to produce the output,” Dollar said, suggesting that increasing public spending on infrastructure would be the most obvious measure to create jobs immediately and enhance the productivity of the economy.
“The presidential candidates often use the so- called demise of manufacturing and the shift away from traditional factory floor jobs to make their case against trade. But the facts get in the way,” echoed Thomas Donohue, president and chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce.
While some industry jobs have been lost due to technology and efficiency, Donohue said trade remains a strong driver of manufacturing jobs, citing of the fact that exports support approximately 6 million US factory jobs, roughly half of all manufacturing employment.
Ironically, even Trump couldn’t stick to his promise to have more products made in the US when it comes to his own businesses.
Robert Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at Harvard University, found that most of the products advertised on Trump. com were made overseas.
“Of the 838 Ivanka products advertised through the site, none appear to be made exclusively in the US; 628 are said to be imported and 354 made specifically in China,” Lawrence wrote in an analysis of the Ivanka Trump brand merchandise in March.
Moody’s Analytics estimated in a recent report that the US economy could suffer a lengthy recession with nearly 3.5 million job losses and a 7 percent unemployment rate at the end of Trump’s four- year presidency if all his economic proposals are adopted.