, Columnist
China Isn’t the Only Reason to Question Free Trade
Encouraging exports could help boost a country's productivity.
An eroding consensus.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Economists have lately been rethinking free trade. They’re right to do so -- and not just because China’s emergence came as such a big shock to U.S. workers.
There used to be a near-universal consensus among academic economists that the best trade policy for any country was to unilaterally remove all barriers and distortions, even if trading partners didn’t do the same. As long as distributional issues could be handled -- by helping people who lost jobs to competition -- free trade was seen as a no-brainer.