U.S. Trade Deficit with China Has Eliminated at Least 3.4M American Jobs
by John Binder
5 Apr 2018
The United States’ trade deficit with China has eliminated at least 3.5 million American jobs since 2001, data reveals.
As President Trump is set to release a package of $50 billion worth of tariffs and restrictions on Chinese investments, the U.S. goods trade deficit with China remains at $29.3 billion.
Since 2001, free trade with China has cost millions of Americans their jobs. For example, in a report by the Economic Policy Institute, between 2001 and 2015, about 3.4 million U.S. jobs were lost due to the country’s trade deficit with China.
Of the 3.4 million U.S. jobs lost in that time period, about 2.6 million were lost in the crippled manufacturing industry, making up about three-fourths of the loss of jobs from the U.S.-Chinese trade deficit.
Free trade, like immigration, is an issue that has come at the expense of American workers. With free trade, foreign markets have been readily opened to multinational corporations, allowing them to offshore American jobs while easily exporting their products back into the U.S.
The Rust Belt has been one of the hardest regions hit because of U.S. free trade with Mexico. In total, about 700,000 U.S. have been displaced, including:
14,500 American workers displaced in Wisconsin 43,600 American workers displaced in Michigan 2,600 American workers displaced in West Virginia 26,300 American workers displaced in Pennsylvania 34,900 American workers displaced in Ohio 34,300 American workers displaced in New York 6,500 American workers displaced in Iowa 24,400 American workers displaced in Indiana 34,700 American workers displaced in Illinois
Meanwhile, since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in the 1990s, at least one million net U.S. jobs have been lost because of the free trade deal. Between 2000 and 2014, there have been about five million manufacturing jobs lost across the country as trade deficits continue soaring.
One former steel town in West Virginia lost 94 percent of its steel jobs because of NAFTA, with nearly 10,000 workers in the town being displaced from the steel industry.
