Trade, in particular NAFTA, are turning out to be hot topics in the current election. Now I am not entering into a discussion of trade here but some problems I have with the process of dealing with trade.
First off I must once again complain about the lack of comprehensive non-biased information on the effects of globalization. This in and of itself has to make people, or at least me, suspicious. Globalization is one of the single biggest factors affecting economies today, policy makers must not only chart the course of public policy in response to this, but they must also make their cases to the public. Yet nowhere is there a report detailing the effects of globalization and projections for its furture. Oh sure one might find such things as the effects of globalization on domestic inflation, or some such thing but the non biased reports are highly targeted and the comprehensive reports are highly biased, its no good to enter into an argument with an preconcieved notion that you are only looking to support.
Now I might have excused this whole thing for a bit, after all up until recently such a comprehensive report would have to be weighted with theory as opposed to fact since the history of globalization as we know was so short, but I think at this point we can say what that the numbers are in, o.k. what the hell are they? How can we judge this process in total, as opposed to looking at a narrow slice of it and judging the whole thing on that?
And as far as that goes this whole business of demonizing or heralding NAFTA and ignoring the dynamic of Asain economies is ridiculous, it amounts to prepackaged rhetoric for the masses have little or nothing to do with the real world. Heck Mexico was losing its job gains to China awhile ago. And when the dems talk about countries needing to reform NAFTA to get access to our markets one of the major players they are talking about is Canada, now Canado may have some subsidizing issues, but come on, we aren't talking about a place where labor and environmental standards are poor. I expect this whole rhetoric over trade to amount to a lot of smoke and no fire, the changes that may occur because of it will be minimal and target countries that aren't at the root of the issues discussed.
In any rate, once again, there must be an airing out of the numbers involved, the jobs created, the jobs destroyed, the quality of both, the amount of money we have made on foriegn markets, the effects on stadards of living in both the countries exporting jobs and those importing jobs, the effect of increased buying power in developing nations, all that...After all we are supposed to be making intelligent decisions here right? I often complain that economics is more dogma than science, this whole process is a fine example of that.
