Unless you have managed to totally tune out every American politician, you've probably

heard that our manufacturing sector has been crushed.

We have had for the last 30 plus years disastrous trade policies.

We've lost 60,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

The consensus estimate is that we've lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000.

There are a number of factors, but clearly one of them has been global trade.

We estimate that as much as 40% of the drop in U.S. manufacturing between 2000 and 2007

is attributable to the trade shock.

Following China's accession to the WTO in 2001.

That's David Auder, a labor economist at MIT.

You may remember him from an earlier episode of ours called Did China Eat America's Jobs?

Short answer?

Yes, at least a good portion of them.

Auder points out that there were gains in non-manufacturing sectors, which more than

offset the number of lost manufacturing jobs, but these new jobs typically pay less and

leave workers worse off.

Or as an economist would put it, the reallocation process seems to be slow, frictional, and

scoring.

The U.S. is hardly alone in losing those good, old, high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Many big, old, successful Western economies have suffered the same fate.

This downturn has changed our politics in the U.S.

We can't continue to allow China to rape our country, and that's what they're doing.

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