Krugman vs. Krugman, Again

In today’s edition of the New York Times, Paul Krugman offers up the old pauper-labor "theory" for why trade with low-wage countries is likely to harm typical workers in high-wage countries.

Here’s a letter that I sent in response:

Paul Krugman worries that,
although trade between high-wage countries is mutually beneficial,
"trade between countries at very different levels of economic
development tends to create large classes of losers as well as winners"
- and so is suspect because it likely harms ordinary American workers
("Trouble With Trade,” December 28).

A famous trade economist
argues that this concern is misplaced.  In a 1996 essay, this economist
- responding to a protectionist who fretted that western trade with
low-wage countries would harm workers in the west – wrote that this
protectionist "offers us no more than the classic ‘pauper labor’
fallacy, the fallacy that Ricardo dealt with when he first stated the
idea, and which is a staple of even first-year courses in economics. In
fact, one never teaches the Ricardian model without emphasizing
precisely the way that model refutes the claim that competition from
low-wage countries is necessarily a bad thing, that it shows how trade
can be mutually beneficial regardless of differences in wage rates."

Oh – the economist who wisely warned against the pauper-labor fallacy is none other than Paul Krugman.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

It’s worth noting here also the apt and spot-on correct closing lines of this 1996 essay: "Ricardo’s idea is truly,
madly, deeply difficult. But it is also utterly true, immensely
sophisticated — and extremely relevant to the modern world."

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