Dems Trash Nafta

But then there’s NAFTA, the free-trade treaty between the US, Canada, and Mexico. Last week, Senators Obama and Clinton were competing in Ohio to see who could trash NAFTA more. Writes a San Francisco Chronicle editorial writer:

The politics here aren’t surprising: Ohio Democrats blame the North American Free Trade Agreement for the state’s rust-belt slow-fade of factory closings, job losses and declining income.

There’s only one problem with that. The science. We know, as well as we know anything, that the more trade between people and between countries the better. It all comes from the basic theory at the foundation of economics, the Law of Comparative Advantage.

The law says that even if you are a highly skilled person that is better at everything than anyone else, it is still better for you to concentrate on the skill that you are best at and buy the other things from other people rather than try to do it all yourself. In short, trade it don’t make it.

The problems in the rust belt are not due to NAFTA. They are due to the privileges and subsidies awarded by the government to the big industrial corporations and unions fifty years ago. The privileges were unsustainable, and the economy has been dying a slow death for the last twenty years as the subsidies and privileges slowly unwind in layoffs and corporate bankruptcies.

It’s a pity that politicians can’t bring themselves to tell the truth, and that the voters don’t want to hear it.

That means that the sufferings of the rust belt will continue.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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