The pro-globalization consensus of the 1990s, which concluded that trade contributed little to rising inequality, relied on models that asked how the growth of trade had affected the incomes of broad classes of workers, such as those who didn’t go to college. It’s possible, and probably even correct, to think of these models as accurate in the long run. Consensus economists didn’t turn much to analytic methods that focus on workers in particular industries and communities, which would have given a better picture of short-run trends. This was, I now believe, a major mistake — one in which I shared a hand.

It should have been obvious that the politics of globalization were likely to be much more influenced by the experience of individual sectors that gained or lost from shifting trade flows than by big questions of how trade affects the global blue-collar/white-collar wage gap or the broad statistical measure of inequality known as the aggregate Gini coefficient.

This is where the now-famous 2013 analysis of the “China shock” by David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson comes in. What they mainly did was shift focus from broad questions of global income distribution to the effects of rapid import growth on local labor markets, showing that these effects were large and persistent. This represented a new and important insight.

To make partial excuses for those of us who failed to consider these issues 25 years ago, at the time we had no way to know that either the hyperglobalization that began in the 1990s or the trade-deficit surge a decade later were going to happen. And without the combination of these developments, the China shock would have been much smaller. Still, we missed a crucial part of the story.

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Solution? Just keep the status quo

As a result, major disruptions now would be more likely to come from an attempt to reverse globalization than from leaving the current trade regime in place. At this point, millions of decisions about where to put plants, and where to move and take jobs, have been made on the assumption that the open world trading system will continue. Making that assumption false, by raising tariffs and forcing a contraction of world trade, would set off a whole new wave of disruption along with a whole new set of winners and losers.

So while the 1990s consensus on the effect of globalization hasn’t stood the test of time, its shortcomings don’t make a case for protectionism now. We might have done things differently if we had known what was coming, but that’s not a good reason to turn back the clock.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4360648&forum_id=2#38957338)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4360648&forum_id=2#38961733)

Don't reverse globalization, because it might hurt the billionaire class and help the American middle class? Did I read that right?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4360648&forum_id=2#38961755)

HOL YFUCKING SHIT DIE

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4360648&forum_id=2#38962372)

these people are so incredibly evil it cannot even be expressed in words

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4360648&forum_id=2#38962383)

even sadder that we listened to Al Gore and not Ross Perot.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4360648&forum_id=2#38962479)