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It goes without saying that most Americans(Republicans included) don’t know a darn thing about economics. You don’t need a poll to tell you that. Haven’t you heard? “Those evil underhanded furriners are taking our jobs and destroying our manufacturing base.” Of course unemployment is low, our manufacturing output is higher than ever, and our GDP is monstrous, but that’s just silly economics.

We’ve all been through this right here literally thousands of times. Free traders can explain the benefits, post the numbers, and a month later the same exact posters will be back posting the same protectionist/socialist nonsense. It’s like the socialized medicine argument, all of the emotion is on one side of the equation and you have to argue uphill everytime it comes up.

Go ahead. Post the numbers again. They don’t mean jack.

The Bush economic expansion, during which we’ve had the most “free trade” going on of any time in our history, is the most below-trend job growth economic recovery in American history. American companies are reaping profits from free trade, while Joe Lunchbucket isn’t.

The Free Trade Propagandists said that only low-wage jobs would be sent offshore. Then we saw large swathes of technology jobs sent off-shore. The free trade people obviously lied.

Another concern about free trade was product quality - would the third world nations producing our goods exhibit the same safety, quality and other standards that US companies did. The Free Trade Propagandists said “Suuuuure... the free market will take care of that!”

As we’ve seen in the last year, no, the free market doesn’t take care of that. The FTP’s lied yet again. And as we’re seeing even now, the Chinese won’t admit culpability for product defects and lack of safety standards, much less *fix* them. So the idea that the “free market” would remedy these problems is yet another FTP lie.

Here’s what the Free Trade Propagandists don’t and won’t admit: facts. They trot out economic theory this, and economists’ studies that.

All of it theory. Ever American knows that if you get three economists into a room, you can hear five sides of any issue you put before them. Economists are people who can’t even come up with correct numbers for GDP, job growth, etc in any given month. Their metrics for “sold” homes have to be wildly revised every month.

And you’re denigrating people for not believing them? Riiiight.

What Joe Lunchbucket knows about “free trade” is this:

1. He has to worry about his job like he never did before.
2. His wages haven’t increased the way they did in the past.
3. He has illegal aliens coming into the country to take his job, and management trying to figure out how to take the whole job out of the country.
4. And now, he has to worry about “what is in my food, toothpaste, dog food, etc?” and wonder if it is going to kill him.

Against that, all the theoretical mental masturbation of free-trade economists won’t do squat. That’s airy-fairy theory. Airy-fairy theory won’t displace what the American citizen accepts as single-point facts: Chinese dog food has killed dogs. Chinese toothpaste could kill humans - and has killed people in other countries. The Chinese are counterfeiting everything from toothpaste to Leupold rifle scopes.

There’s lead in children’s toys. Microsoft is being sued, Boeing is being sued and gamed behind the scenes in international markets. 30 to 40% of the guys swinging hammers down at the local building sites aren’t even citizens.

That’s what many Americans see as a result of “free trade.”

It has nothing to do with socialism, which is yet another grand economic theory - just like free trade.

Want to convince Americans of the benefits of free trade?

Get some people who aren’t economists to be proponents of same. Or put up an economist who will LOSE HIS JOB if he’s wrong as a proponent of free trade.

Then folks might listen.