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OPINION
Creston News Advertiser | Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Protectionism won’t make America great Donald Trump is an optimist. He believes there is nothing wrong with America that autarky can’t fix. Trump’s trade speech was a high-octane assault on the American free-trade regime that has been a matter of a bipartisan consensus for decades and a bulwark of the post-World War II international order — not to mention an article of GOP economic orthodoxy. Trump declared himself in favor of cut-rate AFL-CIO economics, and offers the same simplistic, conspiracy-tinged belief that the American economy is “rigged” as Bernie Sanders does. Indeed, if trade policy is all that mattered, the protectionist Ohio Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown should be on Trump’s VP shortlist as well as Hillary’s. Few protectionists will ever avow, “Yes, I fear and loathe free trade.” They couch their protectionism in opposition to existing free-trade agreements and in the
King Features commentary Rich Lowry
promise of somehow reaching wondrously different and better agreements — after all existing ones are ripped up. This is the Trump tack. He argues that every trade deal is deeply flawed, but not because there’s an inherent problem with free trade, but because in roughly 70 years we have never once produced a competent negotiating team. What are the odds? The Trump/Sanders story is that the middle class has been devastated by trade, especially in the manufacturing sector. The truth is, if the metric is employment, U.S. manufacturing was in decline before the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement or the World
Trade Organization. As Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute points out, the absolute number of manufacturing workers has been dropping since 1979. The main cause is technology-driven productivity gains that make it possible to do more with fewer workers. The American manufacturing sector is more productive than ever. If Trump really wants to relive the glory days of the old American factory, he’ll have to make America less technologically proficient again. There is no doubt that trade has downsides, but Trump won’t acknowledge the significant benefits: Cheap goods are a boon to consumers; domestic manufacturers use imports as inputs in their own products; and, as the U.S. loses less sophisticated operations, it focuses on higher-skilled, more productive manufacturing. This is the future of a firstworld economy where the tide of innovation won’t be stopped.
Protectionists love to invoke Harley-Davidson in the 1980s as an example of tariffs saving a storied American brand. The motorcycle company did get a temporary respite from competition, but it was fundamentally saved by a retooling of its business. We hear less often of all those troubled companies that have successfully lobbied for trade protection through the years, only to go out of business anyway. Trump’s punitive tariffs would be a festival of special-interest lobbying, with businesses clamoring for protection at the expense of everyone else — whatever jobs were saved by President Barack Obama’s tariffs on Chinese tires in 2009 came at an inordinate cost to the rest of the economy. At the end of the day, protectionism is like gun control: Even if you accept its premises, facts on the ground make it unrealistic to implement. “U.S. manufacturers,”
Lincicome writes, “have evolved over decades to become integral links in a breathtakingly complex global value chain — whereby producers across continents cooperate to produce a single product based on their respective comparative advantages.” It is often hard to disentangle what is American and what is foreign in such recognizably “all-American” products as cars manufactured by the Big Three. Even researchers who have found a negative impact on U.S. wages and jobs from the initial “shock” after China entered the global economy don’t believe the problem was free trade per se. Rather, it was the slow adjustment of the U.S. labor market to new conditions. There are ways to try to address this, but none of them make for compelling demagoguery. The Trump/Sanders story is too gratifyingly emotive to let facts or logic intrude.
Letters to the editor
READER POLL RESULTS Which Fourth of July event are you most looking forward to?
There is pride and community involvement in Creston By Jim Stalker Creston
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To Miss Wiggins: I would offer this. Yes, Creston’s downtown area is less than it used to be. I remember when it was announced that Walmart was coming to town. The business people, myself included, were invited to a meeting conducted by some professor from Iowa State University in Ames. He had done a study on the effects of having a Walmart locate in a town. First of all let me say, none of the business people wanted to share space with Walmart, but there was nothing legally we could do to stop it. The expert told us that yes, their business would effect our businesses, but it would be far worse for
the surrounding towns. That, as I remember, was somewhat consoling, but we didn’t want the surrounding towns to be affected either. The economic atmosphere was changing and we would have to change with it. They felt Creston’s population was enough to support a Walmart. They were not interested in towns like Greenfield and Winterset with the smaller populations. Many years later, with the intrusion of Osceola, another small town, their thinking has obviously changed. The Iowa State expert offered ways for us to better compete with the huge store. Find a niche that the big store will not want to fool with and specialize in that. My main product was selling new books. I adjusted my
thinking and added used books for sale and trade. That worked well till the coming of electronic books, internet buying and to a smaller extent, big box stores. Miss Wiggins, there are so many factors that can affect business in a town like Creston. Our town, with a larger and more diverse population, has trouble building a single consensus that the smaller towns do not. You may not see it, but there is much pride and community involvement in Creston. You mentioned that you considered retiring in Creston. Many have already come back home and are helping to bring the old town that you remember back into play. You should also come back home and get involved with Creston’s revitalization.
Adaptive Sports Day a success 641-782-2141
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2016
By Cabrielle Rutledge
Employment Specialist IowaWORKS Creston
Thank you for those that assisted in making the Adaptive Sports Day on June 18 a huge success! This event was sponsored by Courage League Sports and The Learning Center of
Southwest Iowa (TLC). On behalf of TLC, we would like to thank Courage League Sports for taking the time to bring this creative experience to Creston, Green Accounting for providing water to hydrate participants and all other volunteers who provided assistance of any kind. A thank you also
goes out to Creston Community School District for allowing the event to be held in their middle school gymnasium. The participants really enjoyed the day and the support of the community is invaluable to the success of such an event. Thank you again!