Free trade, part 2
Continued from part 1.
Broadly, there are two dimensions of the "free trade" argument: economic and moral. The economic argument boils down to whether free trade is good for the domestic economy or not. The moral argument is, of course, about whether the effects of free trade policy are desirable from a moral standpoint.
Individual attitudes on free trade based on moral and economic arguments are further complicated by differing definitions of what "free trade" is, and perceptions of how free trade affects that individual person's life. The survey questions unfortunately don't fit into this framework of looking at the free trade debate, but we can keep it in mind when examining the data.
Here are the responses to each attitude question vs. the overall feeling about free trade:
- There is a strong personal element here. People who disapprove of free trade agreements overwhelmingly feel that free trade agreements have hurt them personally, and the reverse is true for people who approve of free trade agreements.
- Not surprisingly, people who think free trade agreements make the economy grow support it, and people who think free trade agreements make the economy slow oppose it.
- There isn't much of a consensus on the impact of free trade agreements on price of domestic products.
- Regardless of approval of free trade agreements, a vast majority of respondents believed that free trade agreements are good for the people of developing countries.
- Even people who approve of free trade agreements think that they drive wages of American workers lower and lead to job losses, although to a lesser extent than those who disagree of free trade agreements. This suggests that there may be a moral component at play here (whether job losses and wage decreases are "acceptable").
Although we get a very good sense of how an individual's attitude about the economic impact of free trade might relate to whether free trade is desirable or not, we don't get a good sense of the moral aspect. For example, we know whether the respondents think that free trade agreements are bad for foreign countries, or whether they think free trade agreements lead to job losses, but we don't know if the respondents *care* about these effects from a moral standpoint. If the respondents were asked questions along the lines of "Is the U.S. government obligated to prevent potential job losses from free trade agreements?" (after the economic attitude questions), we would be able to start examining the moral aspects of this argument more closely.
Personally, I think that "free trade" is fine as long as tariffs are applied equally, and labor and environmental standards are kept consistent (to ensure that everyone is on an even footing). Unfortunately that kind of nuance is lost because of the limitations of doing a survey. Still, this does give us a starting point in terms of how people think about free trade.
I think that a lot of this depends on what's called free trade.
Nirmal,
As someone who supports the notion of free trade, I should tell you that there's nothing more irritating to me than listening to politicians yammer on as if any of our current treaties bear any resemblance to free trade. They are nothing more than neo-mercantilist arrangements by which we flood their markets with our excess products, destroying their economies, and create pools of desperation wage labour that we can then exploit. I think that any part of this debate has to begin by calling a spade a spade, and pointing out that there is no free trade to begin with.
My $0.02 on a Monday morning.
-dx
"Free Trade" is not Free
Well said, dx.
Nirmal,
I'm new here and I liked your analysis on free trade. What you appear to be doing is analyzing how people's attitudes about "free trade" affect how they vote.
The problem I see regarding this is that mainstream discussions and the general public's understanding of what free trade means are dominated by the belief that "free trade" actually means free trade. However, that is not the case.
Economics PHD Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (http://www.cepr.net/) has a lot to say about that. He rightly refers to the the "neo-liberal trade agenda" as opposed to "free trade". Here is an excerpt from and a link to an interview he gave recently to Truthout.org correspondent Leslie Thatcher:
What Was Actually Happening While You Led a Life
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012208B.shtml
It is essential that people recognize that the wealthy didn't just get ahead through talent, hard work, and luck - they got ahead by rigging the deck. The rich have written the rules so that they will be the winners; we have to make this as clear as we can and point out all the ways in which it is done.
Economists are incredibly complicit in the effort to conceal how the rules have been rigged. The most obvious case is with the neo-liberal trade agenda. This agenda is routinely dubbed "free trade" and those who oppose the agenda are called names (most often "protectionist," but it can get worse). This is one of the few areas of public policy where it is absolutely the norm to use ad hominem arguments against your opponents.
Of course, the proponents of this trade agenda are not in support of free trade, they want selective protectionism. They want to subject the broad segment of working population to competition with low-paid workers in the developing world, but they insist on maintaining protections that sustain high wages for doctors, lawyers, journalists, accountants, and other highly paid professions. The predicted and actual result of this policy is to redistribute income upward (that is what standard economic theory shows), but economists do their best to conceal the nature of our trade policy and call people names if they don't support it.
Anyhow, this is just one of many examples, but people have to realize that they are being ripped off. It is not the natural workings of the market that makes life difficult for them; it is rich people rigging the rules for their own benefit.
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