The impact of its entry was much debated, but one thing quickly became clear: It was a good move for China. A new study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute suggests that while China gained, the American labor market suffered: At least 3.2 million American jobs were displaced during the first dozen years that China was in the WTO, thanks to an unbalanced trade relationship between the two countries. EPI has long argued that the current approach to trade with China leaves most American workers behind and drives down wages.

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“The growing trade deficit with China has cost jobs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” EPI’s Robert E. Scott and Will Kimball write. “Using a new model and new congressional district data to estimate the job impacts of trade for the 113th Congress, this study also suggests that job losses occurred in every congressional district but one.” (California’s 21st congressional district, located in the state’s Central Valley, was the only one that saw no job losses due to Chinese trade, according to the report.)

The EPI report is the latest salvo in the perennial war over what opening up China’s economy has meant for the global economy. The left-leaning EPI and some economists argue that the rise in imports from China has cost millions of American jobs. Meanwhile, other economists and business groups argue the opposite.

“Imports mean lost jobs only if we pretend we can make here all the things we import, the same way and for the same price,” said Derek M. Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who argues that imports create jobs. “We could just build all the flat-screen TV’s here; the price wouldn’t soar, demand wouldn’t plummet, the industry wouldn’t contract sharply, and all those jobs would somehow be preserved, even though they’d cost 7x as much per worker here as in China,” added Scissors, who has taught courses on the Chinese economy at the Georgetown and George Washington universities in D.C.

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Imports from China grew dramatically from $102 billion the year it joined the WTO to $438 billion in 2013. Trade in reverse grew as well, from $18 billion to $114 billion. But in 2013 the U.S. was importing four times more from China than it was exporting to the country, making it one of the—if not the—most imbalanced trade relationship for the U.S. That growing trade deficit contributed to an ever-increasing displacement of American jobs, as depicted in the graphic below.

(Note: It shows the cumulative impact of the U.S.-China trade deficit.)

The congressional districts hardest hit by open trade with China were those with industry highly exposed to that trade imbalance. Districts home to the computer and electronic parts and other durable goods industries were particularly affected.

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The three hardest-hit districts were all in Silicon Valley. California’s 17th Congressional District saw the most displaced jobs as a as a share of overall employment: A loss of 61,500 jobs over the first dozen years of China’s membership in the WTO meant the district lost about 17.8 percent of district employment. California’s 18th lost just over 50,000 jobs, or 14.7 percent of district employment. And the state’s 19th district was next, with job losses accounting for about 12.3 percent of district employment.

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Among the top 20 hardest-hit congressional districts, 8 were in California, 6 were in Texas and one each was in Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Oregon.

But displaced jobs haven’t necessarily directly benefited China, the authors note.

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Is America’s loss China’s gain? The answer is not clearly affirmative. China has become dependent on the U.S. consumer market for employment generation, suppressed the purchasing power of its own middle class with a weak currency, and, most importantly, now holds nearly $4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves instead of investing them in public goods that could benefit Chinese households.

Other research has found similar effects. In their 2012 paper, economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson found that import competition from China had cost the U.S. 1.5 million manufacturing jobs from 1990 to 2007. The EPI estimates are larger than those in the 2012 paper, but both show significant job losses due to Chinese trade. Another paper published this year by those authors and two others — Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price — reached a similar conclusion: job losses of 2 to 2.4 million from 1999 to 2011. Again, not the same magnitude as EPI’s estimates, but substantial nonetheless.

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EPI’s Scott and Kimball end their paper with a call to action.