By my count, Thomas Edsall found the need to use the word "protectionist" 5 times in his attack (TImes Select) on the populist appeal of many of the Democrats who won seats in Congress this month. It's too bad that he couldn't refrain from name-calling long enough to think about the underlying issues. The basic point is very simple: recent trade deals have been designed to put less educated workers in competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. This drives down the wages of less-educated workers (people without college degrees) in the United States. Lower wages for less educated workers benefits higher paid workers like Thomas Edsall because it means that they can buy their manufactured goods for less and pay less when they have work done on their home or garden or hire a nanny. We did not have to design our trade deals this way. We could have sat down with the trade representatives from Mexico, India, and China and asked them what obstacles are preventing their children from being trained to U.S. levels and working as doctors, lawyers, economists and newspaper columnists in the United States. If we had done this 20 years ago, we would have an enormous supply of bright and well-trained people from the developing world who would be working in these jobs at a fraction of the pay of Mr. Edsall and his friends in professional positions. This trade policy would benefit less-educated workers because they would get lower cost health care, college education for their children, and pay lower prices for all the goods and services in which the pay of professionals is a substantial share of the total cost. Mr. Edsall would know this if he ever gave any thought to what he writes about, instead of just calling people names.
--Dean Baker
