Foreign Affairs - 11.2019 - 12.2019

Kimberly Clausing

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seekers at the border and undocumented immigrants within the

United States, as well as reducing quotas for legal immigrants and

slowing down the processing o‘ their applications.

But Trump has not been alone in his battle against economic open-

ness. During the 2016 campaign, he was joined in his calls for protec-

tionism by the Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders, who

also blamed bad trade agreements for the plight o‘ the American

worker. Even the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who as

secretary o‘ state had championed the ¡ŸŸ, was forced by political

necessity to abandon her earlier support for the agreement. Democrats

have not, fortunately, mimicked Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric,

but when it comes to free trade, their support has often been luke-

warm at best. While some Democrats have criticized Trump’s coun-

terproductive tari
s and disruptive trade wars, many o‘ them hesitate

when asked i‘ they would repudiate the administration’s trade poli-

cies, especially with respect to China. The political winds have

shifted; now, it seems as i‘ those who purport to sympathize with

workers and stand up for the middle class must also question the

merits o‘ economic openness.

American workers have indeed been left behind, but open eco-

nomic policies remain in their best interest: by reducing prices for

consumers and companies, free trade helps workers more than it

hurts them, and by creating jobs, o
ering complementary skills, and

paying taxes, so do immigrants. Instead o– hawking discredited nation-

alist economic ideas, politicians seeking to improve Americans’ eco-

nomic lot—especially progressives focused on reducing inequality

and rebuilding the middle class—should be looking to domestic

policy to address workers’ needs, while also improving trade agree-

ments and increasing immigration. That, not tari
s and walls, is what

it will take to improve the plight o‘ regular Americans.

THE TRADE BOOGEYMAN

Forty years o‘ widening inequality and slow wage growth have left

many Americans searching for answers. It may be tempting, then, to

blame the United States’ trading partners, many o‘ which have expe-

rienced remarkable jumps in ³²Ÿ and wages. China, perhaps the most

spectacular example, saw its ³²Ÿ per capita expand more than 22-fold

from 1980 to 2018—in terms o‘ 2010 U.S. dollars, from $350 to $7,750.

Yet during the same period, U.S. ³²Ÿ per capita grew from $28,600