U. S. TRADE POLICY IN PERSPECTIVE: 1948-2017.

From the formation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948, to the ending of the ill-fated Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) in 2017, United States' leaders of both political parties have encouraged international trade. This paper examines four policy changes since GATT that may provide future solutions: Japan's Voluntary Export Restraints in 1981, the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, China's entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and the termination of the TPP in 2017. Despite a repeated negative trade balance, the percentage of trade in the GDP has been very meaningful to the U. S. economy. In an inspection of trade winners and losers, certain industries have done very well. The overall tradable sector has declined, while the non-tradable sector has seen very significant growth. One problem is that tradable industries pay workers more than their service counterparts, but face an unfulfilled need for trained workers. Multinational firms (MFN's) have prospered. Small firms, employing semi-skilled workers and supplying those MFN's have disappeared. Also as the United States wrestles with immigration, the semi-skilled jobs that the new entrants to the U.S. could have expected historically are gone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]