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A Raspberry for Free
Trade Protectionists serve up tainted fruit and red herrings. Paul Krugman is a professor of economics at MIT whose books include The Age of Diminished Expectations and Peddling Prosperity. His home page contains links to many of his other articles and essays. (posted Thursday, Nov. 20) Would President Clinton
have suffered his humiliating rebuff over fast-track trade legislation
if the administration had not wasted crucial months failing to take the
issue seriously? I don't know. Will that rebuff severely damage the world
trading system? I don't know. Is this the beginning of a more fundamental
backlash against globalization? I don't know that, either. |
![]() It isn't the same thing, as the example of Kathie Lee Gifford will now demonstrate. A few months back, you may remember, the infernally perky Gifford got some bad press when it turned out that some of her clothing line was produced in Central American sweatshops employing child labor. Since then she has had other problems, which are more up Bob Wright's alley than mine. But it is useful, as a thought experiment, to ask how opponents of imports would have reacted had the story been slightly different. ![]() |
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![]() Now suppose that an investigative journalist visited Freedonia and discovered that it was all a sham. In reality, Freedonia was a high-tech, high-wage economy: The Freedonian government had been faking poverty in order to avoid paying U.N. dues. And Freedonian clothing manufacturers were able to undersell their U.S. competitors not because of low wages but because robots and computers made them highly efficient. ![]() |
![]() Now I come to berry seizures--not to praise them (sorry, I couldn't help myself) but to point out how different the case is. For consumers of berries, it does matter how the berry was produced: If it was watered with sewage, eating it will make you sick. And for now the only practical way to enforce health standards on the product is to enforce sanitary standards on its production. But if we impose the Inverted Kathie Lee Gifford test--asking how our attitude would change if it turned out that farmers in Guatemala were actually much cleaner than rumor had it--we immediately see that our concern about foreign sanitary standards, unlike our alleged concern about foreign labor standards, is genuine. ![]() |
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![]() The real complaint against developing countries is not that their exports are based on low wages and sweatshops. The complaint is that they export at all. And so the supposed friends of poor workers abroad are no friends at all. If they got their way the result for the poor Freedonian would not just be no sweatshop--it would be no job. And manufactured exports, initially based on low wages, are the only route we know for rapid economic development. ![]() |
![]() It is hard to believe that people who have spent years, even decades, writing about economics are really so fuzzy-minded that they cannot see the difference between protecting consumers from tainted produce and protecting workers from competing products. On the other hand, I doubt that they are purely cynical. It is more likely that some kind of double-think, some convenient ability to stop thinking clearly when the situation demands it, is at work. But the truth is that I don't know--and I don't think it matters. ![]() |
![]() ![]() The FDA released an advisory on tainted berries. Live Regis & Kathie Lee has pages on upcoming guests and recipes. Kathie Lee's biography does mention her lobbying against inhumane working conditions, but it does not mention her troubles with her husband. A Reuters article covers President Clinton's "Last Ditch Pitch for Fast Track." To learn more about fast track, read Slate's "Gist." Paul Krugman is a professor of economics at MIT whose books include The Age of Diminished Expectations and Peddling Prosperity. His home page contains links to many of his other articles and essays. Illustrations by William L. Brown. |
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