5 takeaways:
➀ Vast global markets are restricting U.S. companies. Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations said that Canada and the European Union are grabbing a larger share of global trade, while U.S. access is receding. “We only have preferential access to less than 10% of the world’s population,” she said. “… Canada, Mexico and the EU have preferential access to over half of the world’s consumers. … And frankly we have lost ground over the last three or four years.”
➁ The evidence is mixed on whether trade policies have served American workers. Sandra Polaski of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center wrote recently that the “policies have failed most Americans.” Corporate interests dominate trade policy, extracting wealth at home and abroad and leaving working people to bear the costs, she said. Trump administration tariffs and other attempts to make trade fairer did not deliver the promised job growth.
➂ The trade deficit is huge and getting bigger. While trade in services has been positive for the U.S., trade in goods has been increasingly negative. The U.S. trade deficit (Census Bureau data here) hit $577 billion in 2019 – not an all-time low but approaching the lows of the last three decades.
➃ Low-income workers were hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve also been the slowest to come back. Josh Nassar, legislative director of the union UAW, noted that high-wage jobs dropped 13% after COVID lockdowns but have since recovered. Low-wage jobs dropped 37% and have only recovered about a third of those losses.
➄ The U.S. needs a holistic policy for worker well-being that includes trade. Polaski and Nassar argued the Biden administration needs to create better-paying jobs through infrastructure programs, support for strategic industries like semiconductors and batteries for electric cars, for example. Polaski said the administration should “create work where the private sector won’t go.”
This program was funded by the Hinrich Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
