Must-Read: Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY

Must-Read: Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY: “The panelists seemed to agree… http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/04/el-super-clasico-trade-and-technology.html

…Withdrawing from globalization would be extremely costly for the US and the world. DeLong pointed out to the asymmetric effects of NAFTA. While he argued that NAFTA (trade with Mexico) had a miniscule impact on US job loss, withdrawing from NAFTA today would have an enormous negative impact because of the number and density of trade links that have been established in the past two decades. Everybody agreed that it was madness to withdraw from globalization and to go back to protectionism. Everybody agreed that economists underestimated the impact of trade. As Autor put it, the benefits of trade (cheaper goods) are diffuse, but the costs are concentrated (aka you lose your job)…. On a more philosophical note, Autor added that workers are people (yes) and that even if the compensating mechanisms for job loss were effective (Ann Harrison said they were not), people desire to have meaningful jobs and high wages rather than to subsist on  handouts… The China effect will not reoccur…