In the February 2008 issue of Commentary, John Steele Gordon has a nice look at the increasing opposition within the Democratic Party to free trade. As Gordon notes in Look Who’s Afraid of Free Trade, this is a surprising turn of events since historically it has been the Democrats who supported free trade while Republicans tended to favor high tariffs and other protectionist measures.
Gordon lays the blame for the switch on a number of factors, primarily the decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States which led to an attendant decline in the percentage of works in union jobs in the 1970s and the 1980s. Traditionally pro-free trade unions changed their mind about the value of free trade, and the Democrats have started to follow. This despite the fact that there have been far more new jobs created in the United States than have been lost in the structural shift away from manufacturing.
One of the oddest things about opponents of free trade is how frequently such opponents are also genuinely concerned about global poverty. But if anything is clear about free trade, it is that it ameliorates global poverty. As Gordon notes about NAFTA (emphasis added),
No sooner had the agreement come into force in 1994 than Mexico suffered a severe financial crisis and a radical contraction of its economy. Thanks to an international rescue effort crafted by President Clinton, and the growth in exports fostered by NAFTA, the crisis ended in 1996 and the economy began growing again. Indeed, in nominal terms, Mexican GDP has approximately doubled in the last ten years, poverty has fallen significantly, and exports have been surging. Mexico is now one of the world’s leading trading nations and the biggest in Latin America, surpassing even Brazil.
Free trade is simply the best anti-poverty program ever invented, and it is shameful to see political leaders in the richest country in the history of the world demonizing the efforts of poor around the globe to improve their economic outlook.