Damn

As interesting as the expiration of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement is, I'm having a hard time working on my policy memo about that very topic. Who wins? Who loses? Those are fairly straight forward questions. Bangladesh and China certainly win. At least their textile manufacturers win. American consumers win. American cotton producers win. American textile manufacturers and their workers lose. Retailers win. Domestic clothing companies that utilize cheap imports win. African textile manufacturers lose. Some smaller East Asian states lose. India does well.

What do we do about that? We should compensate the losers from the resulting surpluses so that nobody is worse off, or at least nobody is in too much worse shape. Provide trade adjustment assistance to the domestic workers and direct foreign aid to the developing nations that are losing out. We should also consider allowing workers over 55 whose jobs are displaced by trade to take social security early. They aren't likely to find new, meaningful work in the remainder of their working lives. It would probably increase the efficiency of the US economy to get those workers out of the labor market.