As a two-armed economist, I’ll say that the benefits of the TPP are uncertain. Chop off one of my arms and I’ll say that the net benefits are positive.
This is from my article “All things considered, TPP would’ve been a plus for US economy,” The Hill, January 30, 2017.
In writing this, I was helped by the clear reasoning of one of our Econlib Feature Article writers, Pierre Lemieux. He wrote this piece on the TPP last year.
Feb 2 2017
This will probably be my most important post of the year, but I predict that almost no one will pay any attention. Macroeconomics is a deeply flawed field, because it is extremely hard to do controlled experiments. Ideally, you'd like governments to do wild and crazy things, like a sudden 30% cut in the money suppl...
Feb 1 2017
Bottom line: If you get asked to make a proposal to speak at OLLI, say yes. Yesterday, I gave a talk in Monterey for the local Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), the one that's affiliated with California State University, Monterey Bay. The topic was "The Case for Free Trade." In the materials sent out to people...
Jan 31 2017
As a two-armed economist, I'll say that the benefits of the TPP are uncertain. Chop off one of my arms and I'll say that the net benefits are positive. This is from my article "All things considered, TPP would've been a plus for US economy," The Hill, January 30, 2017. In writing this, I was helped by the clear reason...
READER COMMENTS
Harry
Feb 1 2017 at 5:21am
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EB
Feb 1 2017 at 6:58am
It seems that you have chopped off the wrong arm, that is, the one that argues about the uncertainty of benefits and costs. Although
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.cl/2017/01/immigration-and-trade.html
is a good summary of what we teach in Advanced Econ 101, it assumes too much trust on national governments to comply with laws and treaties –even with laws and treaties that are far from “the perfect institutions” assumed in Elementary and Advanced Econ 101.
Indeed, U.S. labor unions prefer not to have treaties because then it’s much easier for them to get from politicians what they want. Why do you think unions don’t care about the H-1B visa program but care so much about the potential competition of extending that program to all sorts of labor? Their “first-best” is to condition entry of foreign labor to special authorization rather than to allow free entry except under special conditions. These are the same unions that push for high minimum wages and other restrictions to control competition from new domestic suppliers of labor.
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