This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 24th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

After China's admission to the World Trade Organization

and Permanent Normal Trading Relations status

with the US, a China shock in the decades

that followed gutted the working class in America.

At least that's one emerging narrative from politicians and other commentators. But is it true? Scott Linsicum has a new Cato paper testing the China shock.

He says the facts don't quite line up with the claims.

Some prominent economists have just in recent weeks come out saying we were wrong

which is a great thing for economists to do in fact more economists should do that but

in this case they were talking about how wrong they were about

China and the role that the US trade relations and otherwise pretty friendliness during the

90s and 2000s played out. So as you understand it what is what is the claim that these economists, Paul Krugman, is probably

the most notable one?

What do you make of the claims that they're making?

Well, on the one hand, I think it's great that any sort of expert is willing to look back at his or her previous predictions and strongly held views and say,

look, the data have changed and I've changed my views.

So that's great.

My only problem is, well it's twofold really.

You know, first is that I think when it comes to China trade,

there's a lot of ex post rationalization. So people are, are decisions that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s.

And they are then looking at what has happened since and they're applying what they know now to what decision makers in the 90s,

...