Free Trade Has Enriched the World with More than Diverse Goods | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

Free Trade Has Enriched the World with More than Diverse Goods | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: "No consumers benefit proportionally more from trade than the poor, and nobody suffers more from existing trade barriers. The imported fresh fruit and vegetables, T-shirts and discounted sneakers sold at big-box retailers loom especially large in the budgets of poor and middle-class families.

Perversely, the highest remaining US trade barriers are aimed at products that are disproportionately made by poor people abroad and consumed by poor people at home. The $25 billion the US government collects each year through import tariffs is the most regressive tax in the federal arsenal. According to a study by the Progressive Policy Institute, a single mother earning $20,000 a year pays a much higher share of her income for import duties than a manager earning $100,000 a year. Labor unions and other groups that oppose tariff-lowering trade agreements are unwittingly serving a status quo that is punishing the poor."

"Since the early 1990s, the US economy has lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs, but during that same period the economy has added 18 million service-sector jobs that are typically better paying. In fact, since 1991, two-thirds of the net new jobs created in US economy are in sectors such as health care, education, and business and professional service where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing."

"Between 1981 and 2005, the share of the world's population living on the equivalent of $1.25 a day dropped by half, from 52 to 25 percent, according to the World Bank. In China alone, the number in absolute poverty fell by 600 million. During this same period, real gains have been made in life expectancy, infant survival, nutrition, and literacy. Child labor rates have fallen by more than half. It is not a coincidence that the most dramatic gains against poverty have occurred in those countries that have most aggressively opened themselves to the global economy."

"Trade has spread tools of communication and spurred the growth of civil society as an alternative to centralized government. As a result, the share of the world's population living in countries that respect civil liberties and the right to vote has climbed from 35 percent in 1973 to 46 percent today, according to Freedom House.

Fewer people are dying in wars today than in past decades, in large part because commerce has replaced military competition. Global commerce has allowed nations to gain access to resources through trade rather than conquest, while deeper economic integration has brought former enemies together and raised the cost of war."