Jobs Gap – Fair Trade: The missing element in all the existing plans

If the U.S. is to cut unemployment to about 4.5 percent, which most economists consider to be full employment, the nation must ultimately create more than 16 million new jobs across the entire economy. That is in addition to finding jobs for the 12 million net new entrants into the work force, which the Labor Department estimates we will have by 2018.

The big policy and political question our country faces is how do we create that many jobs?

The missing element in all the existing plans is a robust trade policy that creates jobs here in the United States. For more than three decades, U.S. trade policy has tolerated closed foreign markets and encouraged the outsourcing of work. The consequences of this longstanding omission on U.S. job formation are enormous.

Let’s begin with the arithmetic of jobs. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that every $1 billion of trade equates to 14,000 U.S. jobs. Thus, a net trade surplus of $1 billion means 14,000 more American jobs and a net trade deficit of $1 billion means 14,000 fewer jobs. The math is that direct and simple…

via Pat Choate: Fair Trade Can Help Close America’s Jobs Gap.

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