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Download: February 17 – Fletcher
Free Trade Doesn’t Work
Ian Fletcher
Ian Fletcher is an Adjunct Fellow at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933. He was formerly an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. He was educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter. He says, “Free trade is destroying America’s economy and that it’s not America’s tradition, but rather it is being increasingly rejected by real economists, and that we don’t have now isn’t free trade anyway.”
He offers that, “The key to understanding why free trade is dead is to be honest about the fundamental way free trade is experienced by Americans as citizens of a high-wage nation: Free trade is cheap labor embodied in goods” His point that America has been “offshoring” (outsourcing) jobs for so long now that there is little left to build a free economy on in our country.
In his discussion will also cover such topics as:
· Industries Multiple-Equilibrium Trade Theory recommends
· Trading Up – intro to New Trade Theory
· Whether we can trust economists on free trade
· The shaky case for free trade
· The coming end of the free trade coalition
· The Natural Strategic Tariff
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