Our friends and ideological rivals at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington are releasing a report this week that supposedly documents that trade with China has cost more than 2 million Americans their jobs. The report is illuminating, but in ways its author did not intend.
Here’s how EPI’s press release on the study describes its results:
The dramatic rise in the United States’ trade deficit with China from 1997 — 2006 has cost jobs in every region in the country. In a new report, Costly Trade with China, to be issued May 2, 2007 by the Economic Policy Institute, economist Robert Scott reports the growth of the trade deficit with China in this period has displaced production that supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs, with New England being the hardest hit region of the country.
For reasons I’ve explained in detail before [.pdf], EPI’s methodology for calculating job losses from trade is fundamentally flawed. Its model ignores the dynamic effects of trade on U.S. economic growth, the beneficial effects of foreign investment, and the tremendous and healthy “churn” of the U.S. labor market.
Even if we accept EPI’s calculation of 2.2 million jobs lost, that is a drop in the bucket in an economy that employs almost 150 million people. Note that EPI’s number is spread over a decade, meaning that the actual number of jobs lost each year on average would be 216,600.
Compare that to the 320,000 or so Americans who line up EVERY WEEK to claim unemployment insurance after being displaced from their jobs–mostly because of technology, and domestic competition. In other words, trade with China, even by EPI’s exaggerated measure, accounts for about three business days’ worth of unemployment claims in a typical year.
More than compensating for the relatively small job displacement caused by trade with China are the huge benefits it delivers through lower prices at the store, lower interest rates, growing export opportunities, and greater peace and stability in East Asia.
For more on trade with China, check out our research at www.freetrade.org.
