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In his column in today’s Washington Post [2], Harold Meyerson rightly applauds the fact that Robert Rubin is “concerned with the world’s poor.” But I wonder if Meyerson himself gives a damn about the world’s poor.
In many of his columns Meyerson argues against free trade [3]. He does so because it obliges high-wage Americans to compete against low-wage foreigners, and thus allegedly puts downward pressure on Americans’ wage rates. Forget that neither theory nor data support Meyerson’s claim about trade’s effect on high-wage Americans [4]. If Meyerson himself were truly concerned with the world’s poor, he would unconditionally support free trade – a proven means for raising the wages of low-wage foreign workers [5].