FREE-FOR-ALL TRADE
A coalition of Indiana farmers, labor and faith leaders are protesting a NAFTA-style agreement with Peru that the U.S. Senate will debate next week. They say NAFTA and similar free trade agreements have been responsible for the loss of thousands of American jobs.
I agree jobs have been lost, but jobs have also been gained. What the opponents of free trade don’t understand is that we as Americans are a bit contradictory when it comes to labor and prices. On the one hand we want people to have “good-paying jobs” but on the other hand we want items on the cheap.
The only way you can achieve this is to either charge so much that you can afford to pay the high wages or you move so much product that what you lose in price you make up in volume. I frankly don’t care where certain items come from as long as they are of equal value and they’re cheaper.
Welcome to capitalism and the 21st Century. For every job allegedly lost by free trade, there are more opportunities created. But to take advantage of those opportunities you have to be creative and offer a personal service that the bigger guys can’t provide. It has been done before and it will be done again. So give it a try.
