EclectEcon

I get the sense that everyone but economists thinks trade is bad. Oh, to be sure most people like the lower prices we pay for so many things as a result of trade. But despite the low unemployment rates in North America, it just seems to me that most North Americans think trade is bad because it steals jobs from their fellow citizens.

I know that sense is incorrect in some ways; otherwise, how would we have gotten such phenomenal trade liberalization over the past two decades? And yet my sense is not far off the mark. Ben Muse cites a recent poll in which 60% of the respondents agree with anti-free-trade statements.

U.S. voters rank trade issues relatively low on the list of things they're worried about, but they don't think foreign trade has been good for the U.S., suggests an early November poll of registered voters conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal

Perhaps the next Nobel prize in economics should go to someone who comes up with a presentation of the gains from trade that is super-effective in countering the anti-trade rhetoric of special interests. So far economists have not succeeded with the general public.