Elites lie, Americans die

Washington knew free trade was harmful to Americans' health.

Everything you've been taught was wrong. The elites have been peddling lies.

You don't have to take my word for it – a Harvard economist says so. And we all know if someone from Harvard says it, it must be true.

Dani Rodrik, professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says global free trade inevitably ends up hurting some communities and nations and helping others.

And economists have known this all along.

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"Economic theory teaches us that globalization and openness to trade cause a lot of redistribution of income," Rodrik tells the Associated Press. "The flip-side of gains from trade is that some people, some communities, some parts of the country end up becoming worse off. That wasn't a mystery. That's what economists were teaching all along."

While the Ivy League smart set, Washington think tanks and trained-poodle politicians told us so-called free trade with poor countries like Mexico, India and China would make us all richer, economists knew it hurt American workers and industries.

This raises a number of troubling questions.

First, why would Washington push policies that impoverished a huge number of Americans? For one, global corporations profit from substituting well-paid American labor with cheap foreign labor. These same corporations make campaign contributions to politicians who aid them, and reward universities that justify their economic doctrine with endowments.

In addition to the mercenary emoluments, the progressives ruling Washington and the Ivy League have always found redistribution of income appealing.

Since the early days of the 20th century, progressives have used the income tax and various social programs to redistribute income in the United States.

Then they took their crusade on the road, globally.

U.S. trade policy had traditionally been geared to ensuring American workers would not have to compete against cheap foreign labor. But since the end of World War II, Washington progressives encouraged imports from poor Third World countries even while those countries maintained barriers to U.S. exports.

The purpose, overtly stated, was to raise the standard of living in other countries, even if it cost Americans their jobs. The goal was, in other words, a global redistribution of wealth.

Hudson Institute scholar John Fonte has dubbed this ideology transnational progressivism. It sees all policies through the prism of how they will affect everyone on earth, rather than how they hurt or benefit the citizens of United States (or Great Britain or any other sovereign nation).

Under this regime, key decisions are, ideally, made not by our own government accountable to U.S. citizens, but by international institutions managed by unaccountable, unelected technocrats.

As a result, we see policies written by the U.N. and its alphabet soup of agencies (UNESCO, ILO, ISO, etc.), and implemented through faux treaties such as the Paris Climate Accord and the Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. These international agreements were never submitted to the U.S. Senate for approval as required under the Constitution.

Transnational progressivism has also spawned such creatures as the European Union and multilateral so-called "free trade" deals including the TransPacific Partnership. These pacts go far beyond the reciprocal opening of closed markets – they erode sovereign nations and borders by institutionalizing the free movement of people, goods and capital.

On his first day in office, President Trump withdrew from TransPacific Partnership.

This was an essential first step. Next, we need to re-examine and rebalance our entire portfolio of trade policies.

It's time to close the one-way door that allows other countries to sell their goods in the United States even as they keep American goods and businesses out of their markets.

China has used such practices to immiserate millions of working Americans. But China is not the only offender.

India benefits greatly from the General System of Preferences, a scheme developed by the United Nations that has given the South Asian giant tariff-free access to the U.S. market.

India is supposed to reciprocate by providing fair access to its markets and respecting U.S. intellectual property rights, but it has failed to do so.

India's benefits are set to expire at the end of this month. The U.S. should let them expire – and make their expiration permanent.