Zephyr Teachout Continues to Teach Outlandishly

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Fact-free sermonizing must be fun.

Editor, New York Review of Books

Editor:

Zephyr Teachout’s defense of protectionism is a mayhem of mistakes (“Harris’s Chance on Trade,” Oct. 13).

It’s untrue, for example, that “three decades of agreements branded as free trade … have decimated American manufacturing.” Manufacturing output today is 57 percent higher than it was when NAFTA first took effect 30 years ago.

Nor, contrary to Prof. Teachout’s assertion, is there any evidence that good jobs have been shipped to Mexico. While the percentage of America’s nonfarm workforce employed in manufacturing has indeed fallen since 1994, that trend started in 1944, a half-century earlier. Over the course of the 369 months that have elapsed since NAFTA was instituted (January 1994 through September 2024), the percentage of American workers in manufacturing fell from 15.0 percent to 8.1 percent. Yet in the 369 months leading up to NAFTA’s implementation (April 1963 through December 1993), the percentage of American workers in manufacturing also fell, from 27.6% to 15.0%. The pace of the decline in the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing was the same before NAFTA’s implementation as it has been since.* Further, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage of nonsupervisory manufacturing workers in the U.S., even ignoring the increase in the value of fringe benefits, is today 27 percent higher than it was in January 1994.**

These realities are among the many that are practically impossible to square with Prof. Teachout’s suggestion that trade agreements such as NAFTA have inflicted net harm on American workers.

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

* Calculated by dividing – from FRED – “All Employees, Manufacturing” (MANEMP) by “All Employees, Nonfarm” (PAYEMS).

** Calculated from the data on nominal manufacturing wages available here, adjusted for inflation using this Personal-Consumption-Expenditure-deflator calculator.