– to import . If you’re a worker (at anything except subsistence agriculture), you’re an importer. The importing could be from across the street, or it could be from around the globe, but importing it is. And the more that we can import whatever we need and want, the more we can direct all our efforts to the kind of toil most commensurate with our skills. Imports are a signal that we’re working better. Imports are a sign that we’re improving .
hundreds of millions of farm jobs. But those workers weren’t forced onto the dole. They were freed from mindless labor that had little to do with their abilities. In concert with technology that liberated people from the fields, technology that enhanced global trade proliferated in the form of steamships and deep-water ports, trains and rail networks, trucks and highways, airplanes and airports. The world “shrank,” and global commerce exploded. The division of labor that is the basis of trade revealed itself in skills that had been smothered by the inability to exchange goods and services. Specialized individuals the world over were able to produce and be produced for. Work itself became more and more a reflection of workers’ unique talents, and productivity soared. When you’re free to buy things you can’t produce, you can focus on what you do best in order to pay for those things. And when you’re doing something that amplifies what’s unique about you, your productivity naturally rises. It’s no longer just “work.” Is it any wonder that free-trading countries are so prosperous? It shouldn’t be. In the parts of the world where individuals are most connected to the rest of the world, those individuals are most likely to be doing what individually lifts them up the most. “Free trade” is a rather humble phrase for the rather noble concept of people bettering themselves by doing their best in order that others may do the same. However, to understand free trade, it’s crucial to realize that the goal of working is to get
When you’re free to buy things you can’t produce, you can focus on what you do best in order to pay for those things.
Which brings us to the false notion of a “trade deficit.” It should be called a “trade benefit.” The supposed “deficit” is actually an indication that the workers in the country with the deficit are doing better work than the workers in the country with a trade surplus. Consider a depressed city like Baltimore. As people who’ve ridden the Amtrak train or watched The Wire know, Baltimore is in many ways a failed city with low productivity by any measure of “Gross Urban Product.” But enormous amounts of money flow into Baltimore in the form of government welfare and entitlement payments. Baltimore has a huge trade surplus. But imagine if Jeff Bezos had moved Amazon’s HQ2 to Baltimore. The city would have been “importing” billions of dollars of Amazon
American Consequences 23
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