More on Free Trade

Joe Murray at Paleo Place has an interesting post on free trade and what it's costing us. He starts with a question:

With one in every five manufacturing jobs having vanished since 2000, the Big 3 automakers awaiting a visit from Jack Kevorkian and Michigan an industrial bone yard, one would think that the folks in Washington would be starting to feel the headache from the free trade hangover that has left America's manufacturing base decimated and her economy vulnerable.

But why is economic nationalism, the creed espoused by Alexander Hamilton, the man who provided America with her economic blueprint, to be discouraged? Why is it deemed such a radical idea? And, more importantly, why are free traders willing to abandon an economic policy that turned a colony into a superpower for an economic ideology that has been the ruin of empires?

From my perspective, the answer is fairly simple: free trade advocates are laregely multinational corporations and those who have a strong stake in them. The collapse of the American economy is not going to affect them, except insofar as it affects the world economy, and in terms of nuts-and-bolts manufacturing of goods, it won't that much. (And note that it's not only that manufacturing sector jobs have deserted the country, but that now the service sector is being shipped overseas. When's the last time you called a customer service number and actually spoke to someone in the US?)

And yet, it's not as though these overseas profits are going to be any sort of long-term resource for our major corporations. They leave themselves vulnerable to restrictions by other governments -- we've already seen that happening with China and Europe. But then, no one ever accused American business of long-range vision. In their terms, that translates as next quarter's forecast.

Couple that with the newfound ability of foreign corporations to dictate our domestic laws and regulations and you have probably the best indication that the patriotism of the corporatist wing is pointed at their own pockets and nothing else.

The question is not "Why is economic nationalism being discouraged?" That's fairly obvious. The question is, "What are we going to do about it?"