See here and here (especially the second item) for Paul Craig Roberts's discussions of the perils, pitfalls, and problems of free trade. The vehemence with which people defend free trade is staggering. It reminds me of the vehemence with which people defend global warming. Just as we might refer to the "religion of global warming," we can refer to the "religion of free trade." I repeat what I have said many times in this blog: Free trade has been a disaster for this country.
Addendum: Key paragraph from the first column:
Gomory and Baumol remind us that the issue is not whether companies or individual consumers benefit from free trade, but whether the country overall benefits. Specific corporations and consumers can benefit from offshore production and outsourcing, while the country as a whole loses occupations, industries, production capability and GDP. (Italics added.)
Key paragraphs from the second column:
Brand name companies that once were symbols of US manufacturing are today assemblers of foreign made parts. An industry of assemblers has no need for engineers or scientists. The dismantling of the US economy cannot be corrected by education and job retraining. The US is on its way to becoming a third world country.
It is detrimental to the future of freedom that at this time, when our civil liberties are under attack by the Bush administration and diminishing economic opportunity is breathing new life into class war, libertarians and market economists are demonstrating more commitment to ideology than to the welfare of fellow citizens.
By associating freedom and market solutions with policies that are eroding Americans’ prospects, freedom’s defenders are unwittingly stabbing freedom in the back. (Italics added.)
Nothing shows the difference between conservatives and libertarians so clearly as free trade. I used to be a card-carrying libertarian. I am now (nearly three decades later) a conservative. Libertarians care about one thing: individual liberty. I care about many things, including the welfare of my compatriots.
Addendum 2: Kevin Stroup mentioned (in a comment) that Thomas Sowell (whom I admire) supports free trade. I did a quick Internet search and found this. All Sowell says in this column is that free trade produces more American jobs than it costs. He doesn't discuss any of the following, all of which are important to me: (1) what type of jobs are lost or gained; (2) what effects the lost jobs have on families, communities, culture, and class structure (i.e., intangible things); (3) how the gains and losses of free trade are distributed. In other words, he's giving the standard libertarian line. Sowell is one of the "libertarians and market economists" Paul Craig Roberts mentions in his columns. If all you care about is individual liberty, then yes, you should support free trade. If you care about other things besides individual liberty, then it's an open question whether free trade is in the interests of this country. In my judgment, given my values, it has been a disaster for this country.
Addendum 3: Sowell writes:
Free international trade produces both the benefits of increased productivity and the adjustment problems that all other forms of increased productivity produce—namely, job losses in the less competitive firms and industries. The typewriter industry was devastated by the rise of the computer, as the horse and buggy industry was devastated by the rise of the automobile. Histories of the industrial revolution lament the plight of the hand-loom weavers when power looms were introduced.
This, with all due respect, is disingenuous. In the cases Sowell mentions, a new technology replaced an old one. This is not what happens when American jobs are lost as a result of free trade. What happens is that the same product is produced more cheaply, because foreign workers aren't paid as much as American workers (nor do they work under the same conditions). In Sowell's cases, consumers wanted a new product. In the case of American jobs lost to free trade, consumers wanted the old product, but at a lower price. In effect, Americans are shafting their fellow Americans to save a few bucks.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 