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In the Pennsylvania primary Tuesday where Democratic voters will vote for their nominee for president, and in Indiana shortly thereafter, trade policy will be a big factor. Apparently, the anti-free trade sentiment of these voters confounds a great many observers outside the United States, if the Montreal Gazette and The Times of London's samples are representative.
I can share a personal experience about why there is such animosity in those states. I grew up in Indiana, in a town where a great percentage of the economy was dependent on manufacturing jobs, and where many of my family members had or still have such jobs. The migration of jobs from Zenith, a major local employer, to Mexico, left many workers -- particularly the older ones -- without many alternatives for making a living. It created tremendous hard feelings toward the company and yes, toward Mexico. While the job migration pre-dated the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA wasn't a very popular idea in Evansville because of fears that it would lead to additional jobs moving south of the border.
Whether it has or not is a separate question. In Pennsylvania, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues today that the state has benefited from increased exports to Canada and Mexico, with 94% of the state's exports coming from manufactured goods. Global Trade Watch, on the other side of the debate, argues that Pennsylvania has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs as a result of NAFTA and the creation of the World Trade Organization.
I know that some of the Zenith employees in Evansville found better jobs, and I know some did not. Whether the facts bear out that free trade benefits the U.S. economy in the long run, though, it's easier for some to think of the sting of a lost job now or in the recent past -- and all the hard times that accompany it -- than it is to think of what potentially better job might come next. Sometimes, those personal experiences make a more powerful impression than any economist's well-reasoned case. |
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