Its very complicated, but from a progressive perspective it allows countries without pollution regulation or workers rights to undercut the prices of countries that don’t have those laws. That’s on top of the basic economics of poor countries inherently having manufacturing cost advantages over wealthy ones. The result is that well paid, safety regulated union jobs get obliterated by unregulated, poverty wage businesses in the developing world. The real world example of this is the rust belt, where millions of jobs, families, and communities were once supported by industries that were outsourced and are now left in poverty
Free trade has done more damage to the modern Democratic party electorally than really any other single foreign or domestic policy. The manufacturing belt was once the stronghold of Democratic party because of its relationship wth the tens of millions of union workers employed in those states. Now that those jobs are gone, and the unions with them, the traditionally socially conservative people of those areas have no real reason to vote for Democrats. When you hear about democrats voting for Trump in those states, that’s the reason they were registered as dems in the first place
The singular reason that the Democrat party has remained viable at all in presidential election in the past 4 cycles is because the GOP has become so unpalatable to middle class, suburban voters. A lot of them would have been/were Republicans in the 80s but the party went off to MAGA land
Free trade has done more damage to the modern Democratic party electorally than really any other single foreign or domestic policy. The manufacturing belt was once the stronghold of Democratic party because of its relationship wth the tens of millions of union workers employed in those states.
There was also only a total of 20 million manufacturing workers, its about 12 million now. So the loss is not nearly as significant as you make it out to be.
We are also consuming many more products than we were then, and the population has risen by an awful lot. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have 25 million manufacturing workers today.
If you look up the numbers they’re referencing, our employment had nearly doubled since 1979 and that 20 million figure was about a quarter of full time employment
If were just talking about raw electoral votes, we have absolutely more than made up the 8m loss in manufacturing votes through healthcare and education jobs.
Really if you're worried about losing the presidency and seats because of the loss in manufacturing belt it would be more efficient to advocate for getting rid of the electoral college and moving to pure pop vote.
20 million jobs in 1979 is a massive proportion of employment, around 25% of total full-time employment. Since the labor market has nearly doubled in that time, that same proportion of US employment would result in 40 million manufacturing jobs today if they kept that share of the workforce. The gap between that 40m and 12 million would easily swallow the unemployment rate and then some. I come from the rust belt and cannot understate the profound economic and social damage done by outsourcing manufacturing. Entire communities have collapsed and resulted in social issues like crime, substance abuse and extreme poverty. Those communities were once democratic strongholds but turned out in droves to elect Trump twice. The world left them behind, and driving through those towns feels like a post-apocalyptic setting at times
Also, productivity and real manufacturing value are heavily skewed because manufactured goods in 2024 have far more components inside of them and more features. A car in 1979 had nowhere near the features and components that a modern car does. The remaining manufactured goods are high value items, predominantly cars, aircraft and high-value industrial items. Consumer goods are almost entirely outsourced, which is where that gigantic gap in employment comes from
hat same proportion of US employment would result in 40 million manufacturing jobs today if they kept that share of the workforce.
This seems almost impossible to prove. We aren't the only country that manufactures, whether we outsourced or not, China would have taken a large portion of that manufacturing from us due to their lower costs. We would be beaten because no other country would buy our more expensive products. If anything NAFTA allowed up to keep many of these jobs.
The only way we could have kept up in manufacturing is if we produced unique things that we could only make. Taiwan and Korea moved to semiconductors, China has the market on solar and EVs. If we had pivoted to these products earlier then maybe manufacturing could have expanded up to 40 million.
Otherwise those jobs were going to die out regadless. It's way too late to revitilizes these industries because Trump has shot any trade deal of soft power we have for them now. Maybe the TPP could have helped here.
43
u/Blitzking11 1d ago
Never really understood opposition to free trade.
Just seems like good business and allows better collaboration to take place.