This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, December 18th, 2007. I'm Caleb Brown.

Should we pay those who are left out in the cold by globalization?

Cato Institute Trade Policy analyst Sally James argues that so-called Trade Adjustment

assistance has outlived its purpose if it ever truly had one.

The principal behind trade adjustment assistance is that

a workers who lose their jobs because of increased imports or because of offshoring

should get extra welfare above and beyond that given to people who lose their jobs because of other purposes.

Its original rationale was that the losers from trade liberalisation, those workers that previously held jobs or obtained

wages above the market rate because we isolated the domestic market and prevented competition,

that because they lose from trade liberalization and others gain,

it is worth it at an economy-wide level to take some money from the winners, that's consumers,

taxpayers in the case of subsidies, and give it to those who lose because tariffs go down.

Well what's wrong with that idea?

Well, what's wrong with it is first of all,

or there's many things wrong, but first of all,

the people who lose their jobs because of trade

are no more or less unemployed than someone who loses their job because no one wants to buy

the products that they produce anymore. Perhaps technology has come along and meant that you don't

need as many workers, you can do it with robots.

Perhaps people no longer want to buy a film for their cameras because they're buying digital

cameras. But the effect on the worker is the same. They've lost their job.

Now that's unfortunate unfortunate but there's

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