Op-Ed: Trashing free trade isn’t economics — it’s pandering

“Why does Donald Trump think that renegotiating NAFTA is not the height of economic nonsense? Why has Hillary Clinton changed from claiming that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the “gold standard” of trade agreements (which it never was) to now opposing it outright?..Of course it’s politics — pure politics, unadulterated with facts or nuance…As one of history’s great economists, Frédéric Bastiat, put it in 1848: ‘There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.’…Trump and Clinton are bad economists indeed. If an American worker loses a job due to a factory moving overseas, they see only the impact on that worker. They neglect the benefit to consumers of buying products for less money, leaving us all with the opportunity to save for retirement or buy a nicer home or safer car or take that island vacation we’ve been dreaming of. They also ignore the many new jobs which are created by the ability of businesses to purchase their inputs at lower cost.“

The above quote is at the heart of an op-ed piece defending free trade published in the Denver Post on August 13, 2016. While the piece takes the side on the issue that I agree with, it is a badly reasoned and over simplified piece. The argument recycles the all too familiar supply side economics case that too many use to justify free trade, lower taxes and eradication of environmental regulations. Popular modern economics is centered around to forces; the supply side and the demand side. So when I read this piece and see that it merely focuses on consumption it leads me to understand why the American blue-collar worker feels neglected. The piece at no point acknowledges validates the impact that globalization has had and will have on the American worker. While it notes that free trade makes it cheaper for Americans to buy good, at no point addresses where the jobless factory worker will get the money to buy the cheaper televisions it touts as a benefit.