When President Obama slapped tariffs on Chinese tires a few years ago, for example, he may have temporarily preserved 1,200 jobs in the US tire industry, but because everyone in the US started paying more for tires they bought less other stuff — and economist Gary Hufbauer estimates that may have cost as many as 3,731 jobs in the rest of the economy. And tariffs would also create remarkably few jobs. Manufacturing employment is stagnating or dropping everywhere — even in China —not just in the US. That suggests that biggest factor behind the American manufacturing’s decline is technological change, not globalization.
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