In their paper “Why Are American Workers Getting Poorer?” these four economists find that “offshoring to low wage countries is associated with wage declines for U.S. workers, and the workers most affected are those performing routine tasks. Import competition is associated with wage declines, while exports are associated with wage increases. We present evidence that globalization has led to the reallocation of workers away from higher wage manufacturing jobs into other sectors and other occupations. We estimate that occupation switching due to trade led to real wage losses of 12 to 17 percent.”

A separate paper, “Understanding the Role of China in the ‘Decline’ of US Manufacturing,” by Ebenstein, McMillan, Yaohui Zhao and Chanchuan Zhang, both of Peking University, found that “Chinese employment growth has been largest in industries with US employment declines, suggesting substitution between US and Chinese workers” and that “during the sample period, while the share of workers performing routine occupations in the US declined, the share increased in China, and these changes were correlated across industries.”

The question that arises next is whether the detrimental consequences of trade for developed countries are inevitable in a global marketplace, and whether those negative consequences outweigh the benefits.

Ellen Frost, an adjunct fellow at the East-West Center who was counselor to the United States trade representative from 1993 to 1995, posed a rhetorical question during a phone interview: “If you sealed borders and did not trade, would you be able to stop the decline in manufacturing jobs?” Frost pointed out that “it’s a political fact that jobs actually or allegedly lost are much more visible than gains from imports or exports.” Echoing Bhagwati, Frost mentioned the positive outcomes for American consumers, like the way that foreign competition forced the domestic auto industry to pay attention to quality and to stop producing “crummy cars.”

Free traders argue that attempts to ameliorate the effects of trade can prove to be extremely costly.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Sean Lowry, both of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, make this case in their paper “US Tire Tariffs: Saving Few Jobs at High Cost.”

The Obama administration’s decision to restrict tire imports from China, they contend, “saved a maximum of 1,200 jobs” at “the total cost to American consumers from higher prices” of $1.1 billion in 2011. “The cost per job saved was at least $900,000 in that year. Only a very small fraction of this bloated figure reached the pockets of tire workers. Instead, most of the money landed in the coffers of tire companies, mainly abroad but also at home.”