Defending Free Trade Against its Critics (2004)

of now after they've said all this is one of the benefits. That's right and that's why sometimes trade can be a hard thing to argue for because you see you see the job losses. There are people displaced by trade that gets on the nightly news what you don't see are the benefits that working families realize tens of millions of working families realize you know we we can buy better cars today because the process is more efficient bringing Mexico into the process. Television sets are more affordable today. Things like that so families realize savings every day from now have to it's like a tax cut for working families. About the exploited labor you know working conditions in less developed countries can be appalling. The question is are we would we do them any good by refusing to do business with them. And by closing off opportunities they would have to make products for exports you know the best paying jobs and poor countries tend to be either multinational investments in those countries or companies that are producing for

the export market. We have a little leverage we could lean on them if they're really exploiting their labors. We could lean on them to to improve their labor conditions calmly. Well you have. Be careful how you do that you can end up punishing poor countries for being poor. You know if we said we're not going to allow any goods to come in from countries that have labor conditions that we don't accept in a sense you'd be locking them into poverty and the pattern that has happened around the world when you look where the real progress has been made against poverty it has been in those poor countries that have opened themselves up to the global economy. China Vietnam India Uganda Chile These are the success stories. On the other hand it is it pretty much impossible to find a single poor country that has made genuine progress against poverty by keeping our markets closed by being hostile to foreign investment. So if we want one just from a humanitarian point of view help lift people out of poverty. We should do business with poor countries but also

how are the people of China and India going to become consumers of U.S. products if we don't allow them to participate in the global economy and in fact China is now our fastest growing major export market for U.S. goods.