Trade's Not Just a Blue-Collar Issue

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who knows a little less about economics than John McCain, finished up this week's rant against critics of free trade by suggesting that they were not paying attention to the economic realities of the pivotal primary state of Pennsylvania.

Condemning Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for acknowledging the damage done to Keystone State communities by trade pacts that have gutted out whole industries and tossed tens of thousands of workers into the dustbin of history, Brooks suggested that those advising the senator from Illinois were missing the point of Pennsylvania.

"What I don't understand is why the political consultants prefer this kind of rhetoric," wrote Brooks. "Aren't there windows in the vans they use to drive around the state? Don't they see that most middle-class voters are service workers in suburban office parks, not 1930s-style proletarians in steel mills?

"American voters aren't so stupid as to think their problems are caused by foreigners and malevolent lobbyists. When Obama speaks down to his audiences, it makes me so bitter I want to cling to my laptop and my college degree."

That's an amusing line – sure to be a hit at any elite gathering.

Too bad it perpetuates the lie that free trade only threatens the "1930s-style proletarians in steel mills" for whom Brooks displays such open disregard.

In fact, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs promoted by misguided trade policies now poses as much or more of a threat to "service workers in suburban office parks."

A fresh analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) of offshoring -- the corporate practice of moving work now performed in the U.S. to other countries – finds that more than one million Pennsylvania jobs are vulnerable.

According to EPI, 286,000 Pennsylvania jobs are "highly offshorable," while another 755,000 Pennsylvania jobs are possibly offshorable.

Computer-related work is the most highly offshorable. But we're not talking merely about computer programming or call-center positions. A substantial number of the vulnerable jobs are classic white-collar positions – those of financial analysts and underwriters, actuaries and accountants, editors and writers, drafters and graphic designers, scientists and mathematicians.

"For many years, white-collar workers have watched as blue-collar workers' jobs have been shipped to China and Mexico," explains Leo Gerard, the president of the United Steelworkers of American union. "Now it is white-collar workers whose jobs are being targeted for offshoring. Pennsylvania workers need to wake up and join together to demand concrete solutions from our presidential candidates before their only option is a job at Wal-Mart."

Obviously, David Brooks does not fully comprehend the realities of globalization and the new economics of the 21st century.

If he did, he would recognize that when Barack Obama talks about trade policy, he is speaking about the future of middle-class voters who are service workers in suburban office parks.

Indeed, as Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, notes, "The wide-scale export of U.S. jobs is not inevitable, but rather is a result of our current failed trade agreements, which provide expansive new protections for U.S. firms to ship investment and jobs offshore. The presidential candidates must provide American workers with a plan for changing our trade policy to aggressively address the offshoring of U.S. jobs that is only going to increase in the future."

Wallach's right. But she shouldn't limit her demand to presidential candidates.

Columnists for The New York Times ought to be addressing these economic realities, as well – or, at the very least, recognizing that they exist.

Comments (20)

1. IF (yes, if) trade opposition is a "winner" with the PA electorate....then Obama merely has to say one thing-

   "Who keeps telling you that she learned everything she needs to know about being President...while First Lady to the guy who gave us NAFTA?"

   Link Hillary to Bill and NAFTA, over and over again.

   Even throw in "I understand she opposes NAFTA....now. She says she opposed it back in the 90s too. Of course, those were her 'sniper fire' years" (pause for laughs)

   Posted by Mask at 04/15/2008 @ 9:47pm

2. One industrial job supports about 10 or twelve service jobs. There isn't a Walmart greeter job that pays as much as a job at GM or a steel mill job. No country or society, can survive on service sector jobs, that is why china's managed economy has been growing at a 12% rate while ours has barely sustained 3%. Remember that China is a communist country. The "so called" free traders keep telling the same lie, that free trade is good. free trade is a zero sum game, it is flawed, for every winner there a 1,000 losers. for every Bill Gates there 10,000 people without health care, without a home, without food. making beds at Motel 6 doesn't feed a family. the free traders feed us a lie and we believe them. Lou dobbbs tells us that the reason we are poor is because migrant workers are taking jobs picking cabbage, and what is worse we believe that ranting idiot. this is the same fool that defended Enron. What happened to the sweat equity that our parents put into building this country? just when things were getting to go pretty good Nixon went to china, Clinton shook hands with the president of Mexico and Canada, and here we are. Look at how easily the corporate sycophants were able to destroy and distort John and Elizabeth Edwards. We are idiots, we want to believe the experts when they tell us it's complicated and things are good for us. If we as Americans are anything, we are trusting. Look at what they have done to us, those know better people. They are now telling us that they know; what we should say, how we can say it, what we can drink, if we should smoke, what we can eat, who we can associate with, how we are to raise our kids. The biggest lie of all, that no poor person ever hired a worker. We pay all their wages. We pay for the politicians, we pay for the drugs, we pay the highest interest to banks, we pay the most taxes. Billionaires don't pay for their corporate jets, they deduct those, we make up the difference. Another big lie, poor people don't pay taxes so they don't deserve anything really. We pay sales tax We pay federal energy tax , We pay payroll taxes. We can't deduct those taxes yet business's that ship our jobs to China can deduct those taxes. Look out for the Larry Kudlow flat tax. That is a "tails I win heads you loose".

   Posted by julien38 at 04/15/2008 @ 10:25pm

3. The only mistake that Obama made is to assume that only small-town folks are bitter.

   Many Americans from all over the place are bitter about how Bush and the Repubs have acted, in disregard for our democracy and the rule of American law.

   The real issue is what we Americans are going to do about the criminals now in the White House.

   Bitter? That's a poor choice of word. Outraged is a better term, and a bitter one.

   Posted by jkrogman at 04/15/2008 @ 10:50pm

4. I'm going to organize tours so north americans can go to china a get their old jobs back.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 04/15/2008 @ 11:00pm

5. and get.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 04/15/2008 @ 11:00pm

6. Happy2,

   What about Americans who don't have the skills or aptitude that you admire?

   You seem to be saying "tough luck" to them. And your bitter advice -- there's that word again! -- is no solution.

   Posted by jkrogman at 04/16/2008 @ 12:16am

7. I will tell you one thing that will help the educational system: cutting the top-heavy bureaucracy of superintendents with staffs of dozens that do little to enrich the education and are just money sponges. I mean seriously, does a school need four vice-principals that have redundant duties? That would free up money that could go to where it needs to be: teacher salaries and educational supplies. This of course is heresy to the teachers' unions so I doubt it will get anywhere. But I have several family members in the educational system, and they all agree dealing with the bureaucrats and their relatively high pay scales demoralizes them and doesn't serve the students.

   Posted by yutsano at 04/16/2008 @ 01:34am

8. I believe China produced more engineers from its own educational institutions than we did last year. The idea that only blue collar jobs are being exported is wrong, but it gets at an important truth. Service jobs are safer, though not safe, not only because some of them can't be moved overseas, but because the service sector has lower union participation and less well established unions. Service sector unions are the fastest growing unions, but for the same reason Mormonism is the fastest growing Christian denomination; nowhere to go but up. As long as business has a way to break the power of organized labor they will take it. Whether they actually want to lower wages or decrease standards or not, they want the flexibility to. Free trade deals (which really only free capital to move around the world more quickly and thus, especially with regards to money and stock markets, more dangerously) are just another way of making corporations stronger and unions weaker. Blocking free trade deals and rolling them back is a decent short term response. The only real solution to this problem, however, is a legitimately international labor movement. There are some movements in this direction with cooperation by US unions with European and Mexican unions.

   Also, while I know it is not the kind of thing one talks about during an election, it is worth remembering that no matter how many jobs it loses the US is not the country hurt most by free trade deals. Liberalization of capital markets crashes economies (Argentina, Mexico, all of East Asia, outside of China which didn't fully liberalize its capital markets). WTO rules encourage a race to the bottom which leaves us enjoying the low prices bought at the cost of terrible labor standards chosen by the economic elites of foreign countries with no say in the process by their citizens. Multinationals destroy the ecology of third world countries trying to extract raw materials as quickly as possible, and set up production and production related infrastructure as quickly as possible. When we only focus on what happens in Pennsylvania and Ohio it invites the protectionist label from the confused supporters of free trade.

   Posted by Poppolphil at 04/16/2008 @ 03:58am

9. Just to be clear I am not starry eyed with respect to unions. They do make things tougher. My wife works at a juvenile corrections facility for girls, and right now there is a guy being paid to stay home. He has been suspended indefinitely from his job there and the only way that happens is through strong suspicion of abuse by the administrators. But he can't be fired yet, and probably won't be fired at all. The union fights for every job, no matter what. In this case they are fighting so that a child abuser can continue to get a salary from the state for doing nothing, becuase they cannot trust him with the kids. So I realize that unions can cause problems. So do civil service laws which prevent the awarding of civil service jobs as gifts from presidents or governors, but which have the effect of sometimes keeping lazy stupid people employed. And no one, or no one who is at all smart, calls for the abolishment of civil service laws. So for everyone with a story about headscratching moves by unions, I am prepared to accept them all. My response will be the same. Do you like your weekends and afternoons?

   Posted by Poppolphil at 04/16/2008 @ 04:13am

10. The Corporationist have no Allegience to either the Blue Collar Workers the began screwing decades ago Or those 'white Collar' workers they are screwing now, not only through their Jobs- but when they sucked them into the Paper, rock & Promises scam of Wallstreet and 'day Trading'. Teh blue Colar was conned with 'Buy American' while they sold the our jobs out the back door (and pocketed the profits) and conned the white collar with 'Your smarter with your investment money then any broker'with th esame result- mo' Money Mo' Money for Them. They used the same tactics with the string of the New Cons and the Liberals with Social issue divisions- Divide & conquer. Playing Both sides against the Middle. Prime example- the methods being Used by this gov't In Iraq- which do they support sunnis or shi'ites- both! the Profit margin is the only side they are on

    Posted by Purple girl at 04/16/2008 @ 07:26am

11. The only mistake that Obama made is to assume that only small-town folks are bitter.

    Many Americans from all over the place are bitter about how Bush and the Repubs have acted, in disregard for our democracy and the rule of American law.

    Posted by JKROGMAN

    I thought the problem was that he said they run to guns and religion because of their bitterness or is there a new spin coming?

    Posted by abell12ct at 04/16/2008 @ 11:22am

12. 'And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to ... anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations...' -- Barack Obama

    Posted by HonestLiberal at 04/16/2008 @ 11:39am

13. Posted by HONESTLIBERAL 04/16/2008 @ 11:39am |

    Uzani, his army at Lashmir.

    Posted by Mask at 04/16/2008 @ 12:17pm

14. Uzani, his army at Lashmir.

    Posted by MASK 04/16/2008 @ 12:17pm

    you know, i'm gonna make a habit of quoting HL's quotes:

    "ising, then, they gei-trade sentimeway to eheir frust" -- rack Oba

    sted by HONEBERAL 04/16/208 @ 11:39m

    Posted by frosty zoom at 04/16/2008 @ 12:44pm

15. i always wonder who the service sector is going to service if nobody has a job.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 04/16/2008 @ 12:45pm

16. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 04/16/2008 @ 12:44pm

    Or how about just "_______________________"---Posted by HONESTLIBERAL 04/16/2008 @ 11:39am...

    since none of what he post....is actually HIM (or her) saying anything?

    (BTW, maybe it's some EXTREME form of glossophobia ((fear of public speaking))....I thought autism spectrum too)

    Posted by Mask at 04/16/2008 @ 1:23pm

17. maybe he thinks it's cool.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 04/16/2008 @ 1:28pm

18. 'I'm so hip I can hardly see over my pelvis. I'm so cool you could store a side of beef in me for a month.' -- Zaphod Beeblebrox -- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

    Posted by HonestLiberal at 04/16/2008 @ 1:38pm

19. Posted by HONESTLIBERAL 04/16/2008 @ 1:38pm

    Zima and Bakor, at Anso!

    Posted by Mask at 04/16/2008 @ 2:02pm

20. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 04/16/2008 @ 1:28pm

    Naw...just scared....either to actually type or DEFEND himself!

    Writes his own opinions, he'd have to back them up. Pulling various quotes to TRY to make a point, leaves him the option of appearing "sage", pushing his right-of-center politics, but offering up nothing of his own that could be picked apart and used against him.

    As such....meaningless as a poster, since a COMPUTER PROGRAM could do as much!

    Posted by Mask at 04/16/2008 @ 2:05pm