It is understandable that the proponents of the current trade agenda would try to assuage critics by promising to help those who lose their jobs from trade. These are the most obvious and hardest hit victims of this trade policy. However, the vast majority of the victims are those who see their wages fall as a result of the impact of being placed in competition with workers in the developing world who are willing to work for low wages. The impact of trade on the wages of less educated workers, for which the proponents of current trade policies have no agenda (of course the downward pressure on their wages is the point of the trade policy) should be the focus of policy and news reporting, not the chosen topic of the pushers of current U.S. trade policy.
--Dean Baker
