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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dennishoddy" data-source="post: 2837195" data-attributes="member: 5412">Nobody, even Trump said we should be isolationists. I don't know where that came from? Protectionists the word your looking for? Edit: I just reread what you said about protectionism. Fair and equal trade is what is needed. The US has a history from when this country was founded of generating protectionists tariffs. Other countries have their own, but its the unfair tariffs that has caused the trade deficit that has cost Americans millions of jobs in the manufacturing sector. What is responsible for the decline in U.S. wages? Trade is certainly one of the most significant causes, because it hurts workers in several ways. First, the steady growth in our trade deficits over the past two decades has eliminated millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. As we showed in another recent EPI report, trade eliminated 2.4 million jobs in the U.S between 1979 and 1994 (Scott, Lee and Schmitt 1997). Growing trade deficits eliminate good jobs and reduce average wages in the economy. Since then, many more jobs have been lost to NAFTA and other sources of our trade problems, including China, and recently, Europe.The second way in which trade depresses wages is through the growth in imports from low wage countries. If the prices of these products fall, it puts downward pressure on prices in the U.S. Domestic firms are forced to cut wages or otherwise reduce their own labor costs in response. A third way in which globalization depresses wages is through foreign direct investment. When U.S. firms move plants to low wage countries, as they have done at an increasing rate in recent years, it has a chilling affect on the labor market. The mere threat of plant closure is often sufficient to extract wage cuts from workers. This tactic has also been used with increasing frequency in the 1990s and is effective even when plants don’t move.<a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_viewpoints_tradetestimony/" target="_blank">http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_viewpoints_tradetestimony/</a></blockquote>

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