Are Fair Trade Policies 'Extreme?' Is Clinton Ready For Trump On Trade?
Is it really "extreme" to think we should have fair trade policies?
The New York Times on Tuesday published a story by Nelson D. Schwartz and Quoctrung Bui, "Where Jobs Are Squeezed by Chinese Trade, Voters Seek Extremes," reporting that, "research to be unveiled this week by four leading academic economists suggests that the damage to manufacturing jobs from a sharp acceleration in globalization since the turn of the century has contributed heavily to the nation’s bitter political divide."
By "sharp acceleration in globalization since the turn of the century" they mean millions and millions of manufacturing jobs, and more than 60,000 factories, all moved to China since 2000 to take advantage of China's non-democracy that allows exploitation of workers and the environment. (But China doesn't really "trade" with us by buying things, resulting in a record $365.7 billion trade deficit with China just last year.)
They go on:
Cross-referencing congressional voting records and district-by-district patterns of job losses and other economic trends between 2002 and 2010, the researchers found that areas hardest hit by trade shocks were much more likely to move to the far right or the far left politically.