The collapsing economic consensus on free trade

[Foucaulf]

The way the OP is phrased seems deceptive. It is intuitive, and likely documented in several different fields, that persistent unemployment causes "income losses for the poor and with less education, declining worker health, increased mental illnesses, higher mortality, higher suicide risks, lower tax revenue, increased property crime, cuts to public services" and net emigration from the affected areas.

What the Autor, Dorn and Hanson papers have convincingly argued is the link between import competition and persistent unemployment in areas producing goods substituted by imports. (Gustaf is wrong here: Both the ADH 2013 and 2016 papers show decline in manufacturing employment over 2 decades in affected areas.) The other papers linked just seems like economists reinventing the wheel to get publications.

It is a little rich, though, for someone living in Washington State - with one of the largest export ports in North America, and a tech industry that has boomed due to cheap hardware imports from places like East Asia - to talk about trade being "never good" in some sense. And saying "trade [is] an opportunity for Pareto improvement" is obtuse. What you want to say is "comparative advantage, marked by specialization of production between nations, makes people better off."

It would be hasty to suggest still that China has some irreversible comparative advantage in labor, due to their low wages - their wages are not that low, as can be seen by textiles being made more in Bangladesh or Haiti or whatever. If anything, China's comparative advantage is in capital, and specifically producing goods at low cost without worrying about initial R&D expenses.

[Foucaulf]

I don't recall saying trade is "never good" in any sense. Such absolutes are pointless. The point is that free trade as executed in the United States can not be said with any degree of certainty to be an objective net positive, and to continue to portray that the notion that it is a net positive is a "consensus" among economists for political purposes is deceitful.

The first part was with reference to your sentence:

Trade was never "good" under a Rawlsian framework, but now it's very unclear if it's "good" under various utilitarian frameworks either.

Okay, look, let's talk from a practical perspective. With the people heading into the next administration (Navarro, Kudlow, Mulvaney), the effects of free trade on the U.S. will be framed as a "50-50" issue; half thinks it's a net benefit, the other half thinks every major multilateral trade deal should be put on death watch.

Among economists, however, I don't see the benefits of trade as a 50-50 issue. To use the IGM economic experts panel, I have not seen the panel ever break 20% for protectionism on a trade question: see here, here, here, here. On a "fair trade" question there is just no consensus for support or disapproval (maybe this is what you're getting at?)

The weakest version of my argument is that if you want to phrase a "collapsing consensus on free trade," expect some economists to administer a "97%" poll like climate scientists did on the issue of free trade.