Trump and Sanders Have a Point About Trade With China

As the presidential primaries land in New York Tuesday, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have been hammering home their arguments that free trade--especially with China--has harmed a lot of ordinary Americans, even as it lowered prices for consumers. They have a point, according to research by three economists who studied what happened to the U.S. when imports from China soared.

The chart below comes from "The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade," a paper by David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn of the University of Zurich, and Gordon Hanson of the University of California-San Diego. It's been getting a lot of attention since its release in January, including in this article I wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek.