Educational Program: Evolving Trade Dynamics: Global Imports and Their Role in Supporting US Jobs
This program offers foreign correspondents a comprehensive overview of the evolving landscape of US trade policy and its impact on manufacturing employment. Participants will gain insights into:
1. Protectionist measures by recent administrations:
- An overview of actions taken by both Republican and Democratic administrations to protect American industries from foreign competition.
- Examination of national security concerns and efforts aimed at restoring blue-collar jobs.
2. The ‘China Shock’ revisited:
- Analysis of the decline in manufacturing employment due to the China Shock and its waning impact in recent years.
- Evaluation of the growth and subsequent collapse of Chinese imports to the US since 2011 and their minimal effect on aggregate US manufacturing employment.
3. Positive contributions of other developing countries:
- Insight into how imports from Brazil, India, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, support US manufacturing jobs.
- Data highlighting that between 2011 and 2019, imports from these economies created or supported nearly half a million US jobs.
4. Reevaluating Protectionist Policies:
- Discussion on the risks associated with the US maintaining outdated protectionist policies based on past economic shocks like the China Shock.
- Arguments for redirecting policy focus towards improving the US comparative advantage in services instead of trying to revive long-lost manufacturing jobs.
5. Future Directions for US Policymaking:
- Recommendations for US policymakers to adapt to emerging economic realities and evolving global trade dynamics.
- Strategies to foster growth in the services sector and leveraging US strengths in a modern global economy.
This program is developed by the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA (AFPC-USA) in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation. The AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this program. This program will be moderated by Patricia Vasconcellos, a Washington, DC-based foreign correspondent.
WHEN: Thursday, August 8th, 2024, at 10 AM EST
ONLINE: REGISTER HERE
The two experts who will help foreign correspondents navigate the learning process in this program are:
Brad Jensen
Brad Jensen is McCrane/Shaker Chair of International Business at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jensen currently serves as director of the Izmirlian Program in Business and Global Affairs.
Jensen pioneered the use of plant-level microdata to investigate the impact of international trade and investment on the U.S. economy. He is author of Global Trade in Services: Fear, Facts, and Offshoring and a number of highly cited scholarly articles.
Jensen’s work on trade in services was referenced in the United States Trade Representative’s letter to Congress announcing the Administration’s intention to enter into negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). His research has been cited in the Economic Report of the President and popular press publications including the Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fortune, and Businessweek. Jensen’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Prior to joining Georgetown, Jensen served as deputy director at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Jensen has also served as director of the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau, on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, and as a visiting professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Jensen received a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and a B.A. from Kalamazoo College.
Nita Rudra
Nita Rudra is a Professor in the Department of Government, McDonough School of Business, and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Rudra’s research focuses on the distributional consequences of globalization. Her books and research articles explore why technological innovation, reduced trade barriers, and foreign capital have enabled unprecedented economic prosperity. Yet, the benefits of globalization have been so unequal. Rudra examines how and why this inequality creates political tensions, worsens societal divisions, and drives support for reactionary policies. In all of these works, Rudra closely examines the politics and policies which exacerbate or mitigate these outcomes. Rudra’s research spans both developed and developing economies, with a greater emphasis on the latter.
In 2020, Rudra received the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. She has also been awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Foundation Academic Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India, and been named an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations at the World Bank.
Rudra’s primary research and teaching fields include International political economy, International development Her most critical works appear in the British Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization and International Studies Quarterly. Her recent book with Cambridge University Press is entitled: Democracies in Peril: Taxation and Redistribution in Globalizing Economies. Her current projects analyze how and why widespread poverty persists in rapidly globalizing economies, the political economy of skill development, the anti-globalization backlash, and the politics of trade and trade agreements.