CWT Blog

Mr. Dobbs Goes to Congress

Posted by Consumers for World Trade Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:51:00 GMT

Robin Lanier, Executive Director

April 3, 2007-- On March 28th, CNN "Journalist" Lou Dobbs testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The title of his testimony: "There's nothing free about free trade." As expected Mr. Dobbs railed against all kinds of open markets, claiming trade was responsible for "flooding America with cheap imports," eroding middle class wages, and putting 3 million Americans out of work since 2000.

As a solidly middle-class person who supports free trade, let me say right up front that I have an issue with Lou Dobbs representing me on this issue.

So, to strike a blow in the name of middle-class shoppers everywhere, let me say that I find enormous value in being able to shop for a wide variety of goods at affordable prices. The fact that a pair of shoes costs less for me to purchase because of inexpensive imports is a benefit that goes right to my personal bottom line. I hate to think about how expensive tea, coffee and spices might be if we didn't have open borders.

Back in 2003, CWT commissioned a study to see how imports benefitted consumers, and how efforts to close off markets harmed them. The study, entitled Protectionism in America: Watch Your Wallet showed that middle class consumers pay a hidden, and sometimes unnecessary, tax to "protect" certain U.S. manufacturers from foreign competition that was essentially "fair." Ironically, the United States continues to impose border taxes to discourage shoe imports, even though the U.S. shoe industry no longer produces many shoes in the United States. So the point is that protection for manufacturing industries in the form of high import tariffs dosen't protect manufacturing very well. Protectionism just makes things cost more for the middle class. The study clearly also points out that working American familes are the ones who pay the most for misguided attempts to protect some American workers at the expense of all American consumers.

And while I'm at it, consumers aren't the only ones who benefit from open markets and free trade. Just take a look at a recent study completed by the Port of Long Beach California about the the millions of jobs in America that are tied to imports and exports. Many of those jobs are middle class jobs in tranportation, warehousing and retailing. The study shows that trade through this single port created 2.2 million jobs between 1994 and 2005. A growth of 200%. And before you get too hot and bothered about the wages of these non-manufacturing jobs, just consider that most of the nation's longshore workers, railroad workers and truckers are unionized and make wages equivalent and often better than manufacturing workers.

Mr. Dobbs is just plain wrong about trade and the middle class.