Here’s a letter to The Free Press:
Editor:
Rupa Subramanya diminishes the excellence of her defense of high-skilled immigrants by writing, without evidence, of “the American working class left behind by globalization” (“A MAGA Attack on a Trump Nominee—and the Problem with the Woke Right,” December 29). Although incessantly repeated as if it’s a reality as indisputable as gravity, in reality it’s a myth that crumbles beneath logic and facts.
Some particular jobs are, of course, ‘destroyed’ by imports. But so, too, are some particular jobs destroyed by labor-saving technology and changes in consumer tastes. How many jobs for workers making crutches and wheelchairs were destroyed by the polio vaccine? How many clerical jobs were destroyed by the personal computer? How many jobs for auto mechanics were destroyed by improvements in automotive technology? (When did you last have your car tuned-up?) How many jobs in local hardware, book, and clothing stores were destroyed by innovations in retailing brought by the likes of Home Depot, Amazon, Walmart, and FedEx? How many cashiers were put out of work by technologies that enable customer self-checkout? How many workers in baby-food and diaper plants are losing jobs because of the decline since 2007 in the U.S. birthrate? How many jobs for railroad workers were destroyed by the automobile and the Interstate highway system? How many jobs for bus drivers and motel maids were destroyed by commercial aviation – and, starting in the late 1970s, by the successful deregulation of the latter? How many lumberjacks lost jobs as a result of the rising popularity of e-books and electronic documents? How many jobs at tobacco companies were eliminated by the reduced popularity of smoking?
Globalization is merely one of many sources of economic change. And in a country as large and as diverse – in both population and geography – as the United States, globalization is a relatively small source of such change. From 1976 (when America’s unbroken string of annual trade deficits began) through today, imports as a percentage of annual U.S. GDP averaged 12.7%. During these years they were never higher than 17.4% of GDP and are today (2023) 13.9% – numbers too small to support the insinuation that an entire, large class of Americans have been “left behind” by globalization.
If ordinary Americans for centuries – starting with the improvements in agricultural technologies in the 19th century – have not been “left behind” by the stupendous technological progress, demographic transformations, and changes in consumer preferences that have incessantly marked our national existence, what reason is there to think that the relatively small amounts of imports that Americans choose to buy pose a categorically different and uniquely insurmountable economic challenge?
The answer is none. Globalization requires no more in the way of economic adjustment than do any other market-driven sources of change. And globalization, no less than other sources, fuels economic growth. Unsurprisingly, therefore – at least to those persons who attend to the facts – the material standard of living of ordinary Americans is today higher than it’s ever been.
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
