Trade and wages quotebook

Friday, February 10, 2012

Trade and wages quotebook

1.	To save the economy of this country, as well as to bring about constructive foreign trade, requires the swift adoption of a policy that would halt international wage-cutting competition...that shifts our desirable high-wage and skilled industries and jobs to other countries.
		Culbertson, John M. "'Open Markets' Drag Us Down the Wage, Skill Ladders." The Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1987: 5.

2.	Although U.S. labor unions are predictably concerned about the potential inflow of Mexican products and the 'loss of jobs' from the United States to Mexico, those concerns are largely misplaced.... American workers would benefit from the increased supply of lower-cost Mexican products and from increased U.S. sales to Mexico.
		Feldstein, Martin, and Kathleen Feldstein. "Environmental Purists May Be Mexico's Curse." Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1991: B7

3.	An unrestricted U.S.-Mexico free-trade agreement will be a disaster for workers in both countries.
		Democratic National Committee. Platform, 1992.

4.	[For the U.S.,] Nafta's benefits would fall on skilled labor, while the unskilled would suffer a slight decline in real income.
		United States. International Trade Commission, 1993.

5.	The recent quantum leap in the ability of transnational corporations to relocate their facilities around the world in effect makes all workers, communities and countries competitors for these corporations' favor. The consequence is a 'race to the bottom' in which wages and social conditions tend to fall to the level of the most desperate. (Jeremy Brecher, author and historian)
		Isaak, Robert A. Managing World Economic Change. Prentice-Hall, 2000: 108.

6.	One of the most persistent criticisms of open markets and free trade is that they make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
		Beattie, Alan. "New risk to poor in digital divide." Financial Times, January 25, 2001: 4.

7.	I think outsourcing is a growing phenomenon, but it's something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run. We're very used to goods being produced abroad and being shipped here on ships or planes. What we are not used to is services being produced abroad and being sent here over the Internet or telephone wires. But does it matter from an economic standpoint whether values of items produced abroad come on planes and ships or over fiber-optic cables? Well, no, the economics is basically the same. (N. Gregory Mankiw, Chair, Council of Economic Advisers)
		Andrews, Edmund L. "Democrats Criticize Bush Over Job Exports." The New York Times, February 11, 2004: Section A; Column 4; National Desk; Pg. 26.

8.	For the vast majority of Americans, the gains in lower prices because of trade and cheap imports long ago began to be outweighed by wage losses.
		Leo Hindery Jr., Leo W. Gerard and Donald Riegle. "'Buy American' -- why not?" Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2009.