October 3, 2001. Two economists.
The first was Dean Baker, who received a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.
The second was Mark Weisbrot, who did the same exact thing.
Together, in 1999, they had co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, DC.
On that day in 2001, they released a briefing paper entitled: Will New Trade Gains Make Us Rich? An Assessment of the Prospective Gains From New Trade Agreements.
February 16, 2026. One blogger.
His name was Amol Shrikhande, a self-proclaimed Rust Belt obsessive with far too much time on his hands.
After many hours of accomplishing nothing, he found it.
Here’s what the two economists, a quarter century ago, had to say about the effects of trade agreements on Americans.
Economists…generally accept that trade liberalization has been one of the factors increasing inequality, redistributing wage income from workers without college degrees to workers with college and advanced degrees, in addition to shifting income from wages generally to profits.
For the vast majority of workers—the three quarters of the labor force who lack college degrees—the negative distributional effects of trade over the last two decades almost certainly outweighed the positive growth effects, causing them a net loss of real income.
…Most of the forms of trade liberalization currently being considered would redistribute income from workers to corporations, and from lower wage workers to higher wage workers.
The [International Trade Commission (ITC)] report found that eliminating the trade barriers it examined would benefit corporations more than workers.
It is important to recognize that the ITC study, like other research on this topic, does not attempt to measure indirect effects that trade liberalization could have on income distribution. Most obviously this indirect effect can take the form of threats, where employers threaten to move their operations abroad unless workers make wage concessions.
Blown away, the Rust Belt obsessive—otherwise incompetent at manual labor—put himself in the shoes of the American worker, the one on the wrong end of these trade deals.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could talk about the downsides of these trade deals without being called dumb and racist?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could mention how the same countries benefiting from the trade deals are sending in illegal drugs, further decimating our communities?
What if we elected someone who could renegotiate these deals? Or use tariffs to try to level the playing field?
What if, heeding the warnings of these two economists, we made American great again?
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