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Comment by CharlesColeman | Hacker News Reader

> On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations.

The thing is: economists are hardly unbiased and neutral. Their theories are far from scientific truth, and typically embed significant political content.

For instance: "benefit" can be a highly political term. How do "economists" define it and is that the definition we should be using?

This is an interesting article on the subject:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/economists-globalizatio...

> ECONOMISTS ON THE RUN

> Paul Krugman and other mainstream trade experts are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization: It hurt American workers far more than they thought it would. Did America’s free market economists help put a protectionist demagogue in the White House?

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If it wasn’t China, the US would be importing goods from elsewhere.

It’s unlikely the response to not China will be America.

There are reasons to believe the US should still do not China even if it means Bangladesh or Vietnam (in fact, this is exactly what the TPP was supposed to have achieved, and would have better protected worker rights as well as IP...but I guess that wasn’t blunt enough for America).

The US is wealthier than it has ever been thanks to trade abroad. It makes absolutely no sense that the country that has overall benefited the most from trade, is complaining about it.

What the US hasn’t done, is spread the benefits of trade internally. The US economic problems stem from whatever led to a small percentage of the economy pocketing the vast gains. It’s far more likely that tax changes, regulatory changes, and changes in union power have a lot more to do with that than anything else.

But it’s always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner and people have been doing it for millennia, so there’s no reason to believe the US would be immune from it.

"If it wasn’t China, the US would be importing goods from elsewhere."

Other places don't cheat with market access or steal IP anywhere as much as China. Any economic rebalancing would have been far more gradual.

"What the US hasn’t done, is spread the benefits of trade internally. The US economic problems stem from whatever led to a small percentage of the economy pocketing the vast gains."

You mean policies such as open trade with China, which was inherently biased towards profits to the top, given the way offshoring worked?

This does not mean there weren't other factors at work, rather that China trade was one policy in an array of policies with a similar outcome.

"But it’s always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner and people have been doing it for millennia, so there’s no reason to believe the US would be immune from it. "

My country profited from the US's Free Trade advocacy, and I still think the US's China policy was either insane or driven by elite concerns. It's one thing to have free trade, another to have one-way free trade with a country that cheated so openly, and is now a superpower competitor.

> The US is wealthier than it has ever been thanks to trade abroad.

And more unequal than it has been since the Gilded Age, when the infamous robber-barons ruled the economy unrestrained.

As you said, the US hasn't "spread the benefits of trade internally", but that has a lot to do with globalization. Workers lost bargaining power and income as competition for their jobs increased due to globalization, and unions became weak when companies responded to strikes by moving operations overseas.

The benefits of globalization naturally flow to foreign workers and the few Americans in charge, while the cost of globalization falls on American workers.

>If it wasn’t China, the US would be importing goods from elsewhere.

I don't see the problem. USA has practically no leverage in the trade relationships with China. They can't change China for the better. So cutting China off is a net benefit even if other countries will take its role. That also means USA can now trade with countries that actually respect American laws and do in fact share American values like democracy or human rights.

This idea that we must sell our soul for a small profit must die.

Agree with you. That's how free market-based economic works, seeking maximum return. Inside an economy, free market tends to increase economic inequality and monopoly, which seems to be the major source of many things going on (Trump elected, protests in HK, France). When this happens, blaming Johnny Foreigner is easier..

I do not trust economists on this issue. Many doctors and even prestigious academics and journals are openly admitting that aspects of medicine have been compromised by the processed food industry and pharmaceutical industry. I posit that economics has been even more compromised by multinational corporations and financial entities, but economics is such an insular "science" that they've just built their ivory tower up higher to hide more and more bullshit.

The main benefit that they give for Americans is that everything became cheaper. We can buy cheaper phones, appliances, cars, clothing, and household goods. But that's exactly what most of these things are - cheaper. We're importing a vast quantity of crappy junk, exporting untold pollution and human suffering onto factory workers and laborers in China, and hollowing out the American middle class in the process.

When presented with evidence about the declining quality and huge externalities of imported goods, they hand-wave about rational actors and price discovery and how consumers will just select for the products that minimize heavy metal pollution in some far off mine in rural China. There's similar hand-waving about how Americans will simply find new jobs when all the factories in Ohio automate or close. When products die more frequently because they're not engineered for durability or serviceability, they hand wave again about how consumers are making informed decisions to maximize their utility at the time of purchase.

The truth is a lot of this was a great con with a thin veneer of respectable economics on it. A few of the economists were in on the con, but most of them were taken for a ride. There were a few warning us all along about market failures, wealth inequality, disruption of rapid globalization, and unchecked externalities, but most just wanted in on the money.

There are winners and losers in every decision, and I've already acknowledged there are concentrated losses among certain populations. It hurt certain sectors of manufacturing, yes, but as you can see pulling back from trade hurts a different set of American workers[0][1], and may not even be benefiting the manufacturing sector[2]. Manufacturing is not a simple "I make things or you make things", with free trade it's a cooperative process and protectionism affects inputs to manufacturing as well[3].

Without belaboring the argument which I'm sure everyone's seen before, I would like to re-focus on the point of my comment: The idea that "The financial incentives don’t help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship" is counter to everything we know about economics. You can give counter examples yes, but overall trade has been a benefit to Americans, especially for lower-income Americans who rely on low cost goods. We can say with our engineering jobs that we're willing to bear the cost of protectionism, but we don't really bear that cost in the first place.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-costs-...

[1] https://fee.org/articles/tariffs-hurt-the-poorest-the-most/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-costs-...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-steel/in-michig...

> There are winners and losers in every decision, and I've already acknowledged there are concentrated losses among certain populations.

Decisions are political, and these decisions have been, more or less, presented to the losers as a fait accompli by the winners. It is good and right that such a decision be challenged, and that it potentially be moderated or rolled back entirely.

These decisions also have had important effects outside of the areas typically focused on by "economists" that need to be taken into account.

> The idea that "The financial incentives don’t help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship" is counter to everything we know about economics.

The thing is, it's not inaccurate to say economics is a political ideology. We should speak about it honestly: as politics and not science. So it's more accurate to say that idea is "counter to everything we know about [my?] political ideology."

Posting links to blogs from explicitly libertarian think tanks that quote chapter and verse does little to convince me economics is something other than politics by another name.

The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information. I think I and the sources I've cited have kept largely to the former, and I'm the only one in the comment chain to at least throw up a graph. Call it what you want, but we should be able to make observations on systems. At the very least it's a step up from say, pointing out that a source comes from libertarians.

> The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information.

No, sorry. It's not that clean cut. Your links had economists stating things like "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports." But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement (even ignoring the fact that statement was made though an organization advocating for a particular political policy).

If economics was not political, economists would merely say things like "All else being equal, if our models are correct, increased tariffs will lead to increased domestic prices of international trade goods. However, all else is not equal, so we cannot comment if tariffs are good policy or not."

> "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports."

This is a description of a property or behavior of a system.

> But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement

This would be apolitical in all but the most semantic of arguments. "Buying the things I want to buy" is assumed to be a good thing by the vast majority of people.

>> But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement

> This would be apolitical in all but the most semantic of arguments. "Buying the things I want to buy" is assumed to be a good thing by the vast majority of people.

That's a myopic view: it's not the only good thing, and it's arguable that it's not even the most important good thing. The politics are embedded in the shape of the myopia.

Arguing against that being the most import good thing is the most ridiculous straw man.

> The thing is: economists are hardly unbiased and neutral. Their theories are far from scientific truth, and typically embed significant political content.

That may be true, but are there any less biased and more neutral experts on the economy to turn to, or do we just throw up our hands and say that no one knows anything about the economy and thus all opinions are equally valid?

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