Could the U.S. Really Gut Its Trade Deals?
Trump and others vow to pull out of the TPP and beef up tariffs, but that wouldn’t stop companies from continuing to move jobs to where labor is cheapest.
the U.S. doesn’t have a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam, but companies still make things there and sell them here. They do that because the standard-of-living is lower in developing countries, and workers are willing to work for lower wages.
.. The tariffs on textiles are actually among the highest that still exist, Chad P. Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, told me. But companies still make clothing and shoes overseas because it requires a lot of labor to do so, and labor is much cheaper outside the United States.
.. The average tariff rates in the United States have declined from 18.4 percent in 1934 to 1.3 percent in 2007
.. as trade experts like Daniel Drezner have pointed out, the U.S. manufacturing sector isn’t exactly in need of a revival: Output has actually grown since 1990. But technology has made the sector more productive, so even as factories produce more, they need fewer people. Economists have calculated that 80 percent of the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is due to technological progress, while just 20 percent is due to trade