Ahh, you're going for that anti-advertising market, that's a good market! Very smart. A lot of people are anti-advertising right now - it's a huge market.
Many proponents of free trade argue that we should be pro free trade because it benefits the poor people in places like China. The OP is referring to that argument.
As for why this study didn't focus on the benefits - maybe because there weren't any? Or maybe it's because the benefits mostly went to the executives of large multinational corporations who are lobbying for these deals?
The other comments have said plenty about the benefits, the most obvious being how cheap your daily goods are nowadays, effectively boosting the purchasing power of every American. In addition, had computers and smartphones not been so cheap because of the Chinese workers, the whole Silicon Valley bubble probably would never have come into existence.
> it's because the benefits mostly went to the executives of large multinational corporations
Why should the benefits of the executives be discounted? Perhaps you believe that the rich should not be made even richer; rather, the poor should receive the most benefits. Then why do you think that American workers, orders of magnitude richer than the Chinese, should be made even richer?
> Then why do you think that American workers, orders of magnitude richer than the Chinese, should be made even richer?
Because that's in the interest of their fellow citizens, since those citizens can vote to influence decisions that concern them, not the chinese. I don't think an american want a chinese to fail, but I don't think an american citizen really holds the fate of chinese people, and I don't think anybody should pretend otherwise. That's mainly about doing things that concerns you, and things that you can reach. The state of the chinese economy is in the hands of the chinese.
What I mean is that those decision are beyond the grasp or citizens and politicians. People should care about their own first, others second. Trade is fine, as long as there is no loss on your side. Maybe some want to believe that the world is one uniform place, but the reality of politics say otherwise. Sometimes you have to come back to basic strategy and realities.
Because a Californian individual and a California based company pays federal taxes which leads directly to a more stable financial situation for the country you live in, not to mention a higher likelihood of tax cuts etc.
Also, what evidence do you have that trade with Chinese will improve the welfare of those around you?
Not true, the study references both low skill and high skill jobs. Not to mention there's corporate taxes and other revenues that the government receives that they wouldn't otherwise from a foreign company.
Funny, there's other products like cars throughout the years that were manufactured entirely in America and amazingly most people could afford to buy them - not just the 1%.
The idea that without free trade with China only the 1% would be able to afford smartphones is total nonsense.
This paper shows how there's negative affects from free trade with China, and your conclusion is "oh it was negative with China, but all those other free trade deals were positive"? Sorry, but NAFTA was a massive job killer. Just ask anyone in Detroit.
Also, the idea that China has no regulation on business is ridiculous. Obviously you've never worked there!
but all those other free trade deals were positive
In economics, "free trade creates additional wealth for all involved" is closer to consensus among economists than is "the Earth is warming" is among climatologists. The paper [1] that the OP references does itself say that their conclusion is peculiar to the circumstances of China:
"While these results do not at all suggest that international trade is in the aggregate harmful to nations--indeed, China's unprecedented rise from widespread poverty bears testimony to trade's transformative economic power--it makes clear that trade not only has benefits but also significant costs."
but NAFTA was a massive job killer
As it happens, Don Boudreaux [2] just published something relating directly to this:
"since NAFTA took effect Mexicans have invested more – 59 percent more, to be precise – in manufacturing activities in the U.S. than Americans have invested in manufacturing activities in Mexico."
Quoting Confucius again:
Obviously you've never worked there!
No, I haven't. But I've been there many times, and know many people who do work there. What I've observed myself is that for the average person on the street in Shanghai - say, someone making and selling pork buns, or a farmer bringing in a cart of vegetables from the country - there seems to be a significant laissez-faire attitude. At a larger scale - what we're talking about for international trade - my perception is that while China may have many barriers, knowing the right people and being able to "grease the wheels", makes things proceed relatively easily. In America our regulations are taken much more seriously - we don't have anything like their degree of corruption, but we also don't have that as a means to get around onerous rules.
In economics, "free trade creates additional wealth for all involved" is closer to consensus among economists than is "the Earth is warming" is among climatologists.
Except for, you know, the economists who penned the study that is the topic of this thread, along with plenty of others. On top of which, whenever someone spouts this falsehood, invariably it's economists who are looking at very narrow definitions of free trade, or very narrow definitions of "creating additional wealth". Is free trade good if the only gains in wealth go to a few people while most workers lose their jobs? Maybe the GDP increased, but for your average person it wasn't good.
The study does not say that the conclusion is peculiar to China, just that not all trade agreements are in aggregate harmful. Yes, China benefitted, but if it takes a population to be at starving level poverty to benefit from free trade, then I think your average American would say "no thanks".
Investment is not the same thing as employment. Mexicans may invest in American based companies, but those companies can outsource every last one of their employees if they so desire. Not to mention he says himself I realize that 5 of 21 years is too small a portion of time from which to draw any conclusions. Conservative estimates of job losses from NAFTA are in the realm of at least 700,000. It's pretty obvious that job losses are part of the deal when the government created the NAFTA-Transitional Adjustment Assistance Program to help people deal with losing their jobs as result of NAFTA!
There are many regulations in China. Sure there's more corruption there than here, but you seem to be advocating for America to become a more corrupt environment to improve America's "ability to pivot". Do you really think the brown paper bag economy is the way to go?
Except that even the Fed now admits that HFT's only add liquidity precisely when it's least beneficial (when nobody needs it) and reduces it when it's needed.
Yep. At risk of adding a "this" comment I've spent years reading on the subject, talking to some of our customers who are HFT, and generally just thinking and learning about it.
I still can't figured out a single value-add they bring to the table, much less to justify their insane compensation or the incredible technology budgets they carry. It's simply sad to me to see some of these brilliant minds (at least on the tech side where I interact) essentially engaged in ripping off fellow citizens at worst and rent-seeking at best.
Of course if you engage them, they will get all hand-wavy about "liquidity" - but I think it's striking that not a single person I've talked to has been able to distill the benefit they bring to society in a simple sentence or paragraph. It always ends with the "most people can't understand" which as I get older I've learned is a euphemism for either "I don't know" or "I don't want to tell you the truth".
Either way, so many billions of dollars taken from the economy and put into useless activity. Absolutely no one will be able to convince me we need millisecond-level liquidity for markets to function efficiently.
HFT don't provide liquidity for liquidity's sake. They make markets more efficient, i.e. closer to the "one true price" (not necessarily the fair price, because there's no way HFTs can outbid all the money collected in index/sovereign founds or printed by central banks). They also reduce the spreads. For an ordinary person, they improve the markets.
The complaint about "brilliant minds being wasted" rings true, but you could make the same complaint about all of finance, and even most of Silicon Valley focused on extracting rents by serving ads - both are ultimately zero-sum games where insiders profit at the loss of society.
I think the ultimate problem is, there are no real problems that smart people could work on and make a contribution (and earn a good living) - or at least I don't see any.
You have to be very careful with laws like this where a human has to sit and evaluate the societal benefit of one business over another. Tons of unintended, and potentially very negative, consequences to this.
Simplifying the tax system and increasing the top marginal tax rates back to something closer to where they were 40 years ago is preferable in my opinion.
The vast majority of billionaires are people whose names and actions, entrepreneurial or not, none of us know. Just because you can name a handful of successful rich businessmen over the last century, doesn't even come close to proving that most billionaires are like Musk.
Remember that most of SpaceX's core technology was literally given to them by NASA, and on top of that they're getting guaranteed contracts by the government (i.e. the dreaded government funding - they don't know how to allocate capital, right?).
Even the landing of the first stage was mostly based on NASA research. Which by the way, NASA had achieved long ago.
SpaceX innovated with their cost cutting, and maybe now their manufacturing processes, and by being lucky by benefitting from a period of cost cutting by NASA whereby they could hire a bunch of NASA engineers/scientists.
You see often enough companies hiring H1-B's, have their American equivalents train them, and then fire the American workers.