Here’s a letter to American Compass:
Editor:
John Hendrickson serves up a dog’s breakfast of alleged reasons why Midwesterners should support economic nationalism government obstructions of Americans’ right to spend their incomes in whatever peaceful ways they choose (“Economic Nationalism in the Heartland,” Sept. 11). Like all protectionist dishes, this one consists of little more than non sequiturs, half-truths, and inapposite anecdotes, all mixed together with economic cluelessness.
One example suffices to give a flavor of the poor ingredients of Hendrickson’s argument. He writes: “Many manufacturers in Iowa closed down under pressure from foreign competition or relocated their own production offshore, with devastating effect on their communities, especially in rural areas.” Clicking on the link he supplies takes the reader, not to evidence of the alleged devastation, but to a 2019 Washington Post column. This column, by Henry Olsen, is concocted of grubby components similar to those in Hendrickson’s dish – including the same complaint about the damage purportedly visited upon Iowans by NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994.
So what actually happened to manufacturing in Iowa? In 2023, the inflation-adjusted value of manufacturing output in Iowa was 29 percent higher than it was in 1997 (the first year for which I can find reliable data).* This growth in Iowa’s manufacturing output was slightly greater than the 26 percent growth in manufacturing output, over those same years, for the United States as a whole. As for manufacturing employment in Iowa, it is today about 1.6 percent higher than when NAFTA was implemented, despite America’s overall manufacturing employment having fallen, over this same time, by 23.1 percent. Perhaps more significantly, Iowa’s unemployment rate in 1993 was 4.1 percent while today (July 2024) it stands at 2.8 percent.
Some devastation.
If American Compass wishes to be a serious participant in the debate on free trade versus protectionism, it will have to offer arguments more meaty and sound – more intellectually nutritious – than that which is served here by Hendrickson.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030* I adjusted for inflation the nominal dollar figures on Iowa’s manufacturing output by using this Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index calculator.
