Do Trade Agreements Kill Jobs

Words: 1264
Pages: 6

“Do Trade Agreements kill Jobs” is an article tackles the question that currently the top presidential candidates are using to gain votes, Are Trade agreements the reason Americans are jobless? All Presidential candidates agree upon one current issue and that is international trade agreements, whereas top economists agree that international trade agreements are good for the country. One thing is clear our candidates are at odds with the key component of economic theory: which is the benefits of free trade. Social reality is challenging economic theory. Voters and politicians are concerned since they see Americans losing jobs, manufacturing factories closing down and entire industries becoming extinct. Trade Agreements like NAFTA were created …show more content…
Companies found ways to keep the price of their stocks high and one way of doing so was by off-shoring. The shift to China was done in order to reap the benefit of short term cost savings not total cost. According to one Fortune 500 hundred executive, the shift to China was suggested by analysts who told management that if the shift didn't occur than they would not get a buy recommendation. Executives who made the decisions were compensated by stock options thus they did not think about long term effects and shifted to …show more content…
Blinded by greed and ease they ignored the long term effect. This resulted in loss of whole industries in the USA. Multiple industries followed suit and out sourced and after a decade of everyone looking at just short term benefits Americans suffered. Manufacturing jobs left the US industry thus limiting the ability of US to invent or produce the next generation of high tech products and innovation, that were needed to continue growing the economy. The article points out that even if companies wanted to produce next generation products in the US they could not no due to lack of resources. Since process engineering and manufacturing go hand in hand, the decline in manufacturing industry lead a chain reaction. With not manufacturing and process engineering innovation and new product development halted in the US. The list of industries lost by the US and at risk industry is very long. What management failed to realize is that by thinking only short term they slowing themselves lost the expertise to run and grow business in the US in the future. The article suggests that instead of blaming international trade agreements business should focus on the new way of think and that is to introduce innovation and entrepreneurship into their business and