Sounds and Fury

美國著名自由派（意思是有點左）經濟學者Paul Krugman在上週紐約時報專欄談到貿易對工資的影響，這是修改了他九零年代的觀點。我摘要如下，原文在最後。

1.對外貿易的確會降低低技術美國勞工工資（在九零年代，他認為貿易對工資的影響不大，因為當時貿易比例不是太高，但現在不同了，尤其是來自中國的廉價物品）。

2.怎麼辦？不能採取保護主義，因為這不利於第三世界國家的發展。

3.另一個方法是在自由貿易協定中加上勞動標準，亦即要求貿易對象必須給予勞工組工會權、廢除童工等。但相對來說，這些國家工資還是很低，仍然無法解決其對美國工資的影響。

4. 要減輕貿易對工資下降的影響，不能從貿易問題著手，只有增強福利政策。


延伸閱讀
美國的不平等
不平等的原因
不平等的改革

Divided Over Trade,
Paul Krugman
NY Times （5/14/2007）:

Nothing divides Democrats like international trade policy. That became clear last week, when the announcement of a deal on trade between Democratic leaders and the Bush administration caused many party activists to accuse the leadership of selling out.


The furor subsided a bit as details ... emerged... But the Democrats remain sharply divided between those who believe that globalization is driving down ... wages..., and those who believe that ... international is ... essential... What makes this divide so agonizing is that both sides are right.


Fears that low-wage competition is driving down U.S. wages have a real basis in both theory and fact. When we import labor-intensive manufactured goods..., the result is reduced demand for less-educated American workers, which leads ... to lower wages... And no, cheap consumer goods at Wal-Mart aren’t adequate compensation.


So imports from the third world, although they make the United States as a whole richer, make tens of millions of Americans poorer. How much poorer? In the mid-1990s ... economists, myself included, crunched the numbers and concluded that the ... effects ... on the wages of less-educated Americans were modest, not more than a few percent.


But... We’re buying a lot more from third-world countries today... Trade still isn’t the main source of rising economic inequality, but it’s a bigger factor than it was. So there is a dark side to globalization. The question, however, is what to do about it.


Should we go back to old-fashioned protectionism? That would have ugly consequences:... other wealthy countries would follow suit, closing off poor nations’ access to world markets.

Where would that leave Bangladesh, which is able to survive ... only because it can export clothing and other labor-intensive products? Where would it leave India ... if barriers to trade ... went back up?

And where would it leave Mexico? Whatever you think of Nafta, undoing the agreement could ... have disastrous economic and political consequences south of the border.

Because of these concerns, even trade skeptics tend to shy away from ... outright protectionism, and to look for softer measures, which mainly come down to trying to push up foreign wages. The key element of the new trade deal is its inclusion of “labor standards”: countries ... will have to allow union organizing, while abolishing child and slave labor.

The Bush administration, by the way, opposed labor standards, not ... to keep imports cheap, ... it was afraid that America would end up being forced to improve its own labor policies. So the inclusion of these standards ... represents a real victory for workers.


Realistically, however, labor standards won’t do all that much for American workers. No matter how free third-world workers are to organize, they’re still going to be paid very little, and trade will continue to place pressure on U.S. wages.


So what’s the answer? I don’t think there is one, as long as the discussion is restricted to trade policy: all-out protectionism isn’t acceptable, and labor standards in trade agreements will help only a little.


By all means, let’s have strong labor standards in our pending trade agreements... But if Democrats really want to help American workers, they’ll have to do it with a pro-labor policy that relies on better tools than trade policy. Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy’s winners, would be a good place to start.


注意，他在紐時的部落格上又進一步說明這些問題。