This is a common theme in Republican administrations dating back to presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. What you do is you break the government, make it very hard for the government to function, and then you loudly announce that the government can’t do anything.
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The Case for Free Trade
humanity from our policies, and can contribute to societal ills like depression, addiction, and isolation.
Trade adjustment could be made easier by regulatory reforms to remove its attendant friction. These include:
• Less restrictive zoning and permit rules; • Occupational licensing reform; • Automatic sunsets for new regulations; and
• Apresidentially appointed Regulatory Reduction Commission that would examine the Code of Federal Regulations each year and send repeal packages to Congress that include old, obsolete, redundant, and harmful regulations.”
People who need help should be able to get it. Progressive trade policies help only special interests while harming the very people they are supposedly intended to help.
Trade Adjustment Assistance. Trade adjustment assistance is a popular policy for aiding displaced workers. Though flawed, it is a bargaining tool that can potentially help to get sound trade policy adopted. A conservative Administration should approach trade adjustment assistance with caution and use it as a last-resort political bargaining tool and not as a first-resort policy. Funding for job training programs and the like will typically find its way to labor union slush funds, left-leaning nonprofits, and other progressive causes that will not necessarily help displaced workers.
A better approach to trade adjustment assistance, if it must be expanded, is direct cash transfers. Not only would this prevent progressive hijacking of programs and their funding, but cash is the most flexible type of aid. It treats people as adults and lets them make their own choices about their next steps. Major life decisions should be made by individuals for themselves, not for them in Washington.
Trade adjustment assistance should treat workers who lose their jobs to international trade the same as workers who lose their jobs for any other reason are treated. While that will not likely come to pass in the near future, steps in that direction are possible. Technological change displaces six times as many workers as trade displaces, yet workers displaced by technology get no special treatment. Nor should they. Unemployment remains low because it grows alongside population, and real wages continue to rise over time. Trade-displaced workers should be eligible for the same benefits for which anyone else is eligible, no more and no less.