Dean Baker's Blog, page 250

USA Today Gets Numbers Seriously Wrong in Pushing Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trashing Unions

USA Today got its numbers seriously wrong in pushing the case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Its editorial told readers:

"Democrats, however, are wedded to unions who blame trade, and trade agreements, for the decline in manufacturing jobs.

"Theirs is a simplistic view that ignores the fact that manufacturing output has nearly doubled since the late 1990s, showing that technology is the real job killer."

It's USA Today, not the unions, who are being simplistic here. The data they ar...

Jump in March Trade Deficit Means GDP Fell in First Quarter

The sharp jump in the March trade deficit reported this morning means that GDP in the first quarter will be revised into negative territory. The $51.4 billion trade deficit reported for March, was $15.5 billion increase from the $35.9 billion deficit reported in February. Some of this is undoubtedly noise in the data (the February number was surprisingly low), but some of the rise is likely due to the impact of the higher dollar which is making U.S. goods and services less competitive interna...

Catherine Rampell Joins the "It's Hard to Get Good Help" Crowd

Catherine Rampell used her column to note the decline in birthrates among millennials. She identifies the weak economy as a main factor behind the drop. However she warns that this drop in birthrates is "bad news for older folks" because:

"for economic reasons — including cultivating the next generation of Americans to work and pay for the benefits of their many, many elders — we still need more babies."

This is not true. If we have fewer people entering the labor force, we would expect that...

Thomas McLarty Thinks that if We Shut a Car Assembly Plant in Ohio and Send the Parts to Be Assembled in Mexico, We Have Created Jobs in the United States

The advocates of the Trans-Pacific Partnership must really be desperate. Why else would they continue to make such ridiculous assertions? (And why does the Post print them?)

Thomas McLarty puts on the show today. McLarty was President Clinton's chief of staff when they pushed NAFTA through Congress. He used his column to tout all the jobs created through exports as a result of NAFTA. He never once mentions the jobs lost to imports. In fact, the United States went from having a modest trade su...

Robert Samuelson Supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Robert Samuelson begins his argument for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by telling readers:

"The trouble with our trade debates is that people assume they’re only about economics."

I suppose this means that the advocates of TPP think they are losing the economic argument so now it is a matter of national security. (Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many of the foreign policy experts arguing for the necessity of the TPP supported the Iraq war.)

Anyhow, we do get some economics in Samuel...

NYT Does Serious Editorializing for TPP in News Section

A NYT piece analyzing White House efforts to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) began with the sentence:

"When President Obama defends the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a far-reaching agreement to tear down trade barriers between the United States and 11 other nations, he often argues it would cure the ills inflicted on American workers by trade pacts of the past, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement."

The problem with this sentence is that the TPP is not obviously, "a far-...

Forbes' Tim Worstall Is Upset The Trans-Pacific Partnership Bans Export Subsidies

Actually, I don't know that he is, but he would be if he were consistent. Earlier in the week, he complained that I thought there should be rules on currency manipulation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The gist of his argument is that if another country wants to deliberately under-value its currency, so that we can buy their exports at a lower price, our response should be "thank you very much." In effect the currency manipulator is subsidizing our consumption.

This is of course true...

David Brooks and the Federal Government's $14,000 Per Year Per Poor Person

In the United States it's considered fine to just make crap up when talking about the government, especially when it comes to programs for poor people. That is why Ronald Reagan ran around the country telling people about the welfare queen who drove up to the welfare office every month in her new Cadillac to pick up her check. 

Today, David Brooks does the welfare queen routine in his NYT column, telling readers:

"Since 1980 federal antipoverty spending has exploded. As Robert Samuelson...

"Globalization" Was Policy, Not Something That Happened

E.J. Dionne and Harold Meyerson both had interesting columns in the Post this morning, but they suffer from the same major error. Both note the loss of manufacturing jobs and downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers due to effects of trade. But both speak of this as being the result of a natural process of globalization.

This is wrong. The downward pressure on wages was the deliberate outcome of government policies designed to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct com...

The Man Who Completely Missed the Housing Bubble and Was Convinced Financial Disruption Would be Restricted to the Subprime Market Deserves Two Seven-Figure Sinecures?

I hate to be picking on Matt O'Brien again, but come on, this is setting the bar pretty goddamn low. He began a piece reporting on a consulting gig that Bernanke will have the bond fund Pimco by telling readers:

"If anyone deserves two seven-figure sinecures, it's Ben Bernanke."

I won't go over the full indictment of Ben Bernanke and will give him credit for a reasonably good job trying to boost the economy post-crash in the wake of the outraged opposition of the right-wing, but let's get rea...