(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A New Anti-Trade War Argument Bites the Dust

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BLS, blue-collar workers, Bruce Yandle, Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumers, George Mason University, inflation-adjusted wages, Mercatus Center, private sector, real wages, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, wages, Washington Examiner, work week, workers, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Bruce Yandle of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center has just added a novel claim to the list of catastrophes allegedly triggered by President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies. In an October 28 Washington (D.C.) Examiner post, He seems to understand that amid rock-bottom rates of U.S. joblessness, it’s getting ever tougher to contend that the trade wars are killing American employment (though the rate of net job gains has certainly slowed in most sectors since the advent of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in March, 2018).

So Yandle, a former university business school dean, has come up with another reason for the nation’s workers and aspiring workers to hate the curbs on trade: They’re making Americans work too darned hard for the stuff they like to buy. It’s an intriguing idea with just one fatal flaw: It’s not supported by a shred of evidence. P.S.: It takes about 10 minutes of internet surfing and arithmetic-ing to demolish.

Here’s Yandle’s case:

“[T]he occurrence of high employment in the face of a slowing economy can be the result of putting tariff-made rocks in our own harbors to keep out lower-cost foreign goods. When cheaper goods can no longer be imported, we have to work longer and harder to maintain the same level of consumption.

“Low unemployment is something to celebrate but let’s at least note that there are some people who might (quite reasonably) prefer to work a little less with more leisure time and cheaper cars, clothes, and tools, which are some of the goods that have been hit with tariffs.”

I’m unaware of any instances of workers complaining that, “I’d be able to knock off earlier and clean out Walmart if only for those stupid tariffs,” but what I suppose really doesn’t matter. Nor should what anyone supposes matter – because the federal government keeps statistics both on Americans’ hours on the job and their pay.

The results of my research are below. They show hours worked for various major categories of private sector employees, and the change in their hourly inflation-adjusted wages, over two relevant time periods. The first goes from the first full month of the Trump administration (February, 2017) through the latest data month (this September – tomorrow the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release the October numbers), and from the first full month of the administration’s first important tariffs (April, 2018, for the steel and aluminum levies) through September. (Government employees’ wages aren’t monitored by BLS because their pay is set largely via politicians’ decisions, and therefore says little about the economy’s fundamental strengths or weaknesses.)

Total private weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 34.3 to 34.4

Total private weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 34.5 to 34.4

Total blue-collar weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 33.6 to 33.6

Total blue-collar weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 33.8 to 33.6

Total manufacturing weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 40.7 to 40.5

Total manufacturing weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 41.0 to 40.5

Total manufacturing blue-collar weekly hours since Trump inauguration: 41.9 to 41.5

Total manufacturing blue-collar weekly hours since 1^st (metals) tariffs: 42.4 to 41.5

Total private real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +2.53 percent

Total private real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +.1.86 percent

Total blue-collar real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +3.05 percent

Total blue-collar real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +2.49 percent

Total manufacturing real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +0.46 percent

Total manufacturing real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +0.83 percent

Total manufacturing blue-collar real hourly wage since Trump inauguration: +2.77 percent

Total manufacturing blue-collar real hourly wage since 1^st (metals) tariffs: +1.25 percent

For every category except two, over both time periods, workers’ weekly hours went down, and their real wages went up. That is, their leisure time and the buying power of their pay both have risen. They’ve been working less and been able to purchase more.

The first exception is overall private sector workers. Since Mr. Trump’s administration began, their work week has edged up – a tenth of an hour. Even so, their pay rose faster. So they don’t have much cause to complain about working too hard and enjoying the fruits of their labor less.

The second exception entails the overall blue-collar workforce (called “production and nonsupervisory employees” in BLS-ese). Its work week has stayed the same since the Trump inauguration. At the same time, however, this group experienced the fastest wage increase during this period. And its pay in constant dollars went up even faster after the metals tariffs were imposed – as its workweek dipped.

Moreover, this points to another problem with Yandle’s case:  All four categories of workers saw their workweek fall faster after the tariffs’ imposition than before. And in three of the four (except for manufacturing blue-collar workers) wages rose faster after the tariffs went on as well.

And in case you’re wondering, to create some context, whether American workers recently have been significantly better off in the absence of tariffs and trade wars, the answer is, “Not consistently during the current economic recovery.”

No one’s saying that these results show that the United States is a workers’ paradise, or is becoming one because of the Trump tariffs. But if anyone has a right to be grumpy about the above trends, it’s trade mavens like Yandle, who are pushing fact-free arguments to take the levies down.

Im-Politic: Why Populists Look Strong in Iowa & New Hampshire

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2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Donald Trump, Im-Politic, Iowa, New Hampshire, primaries, Republicans, Trade, trade balances, wages, work week

Reporters who cover presidential politics seem think they’ve discovered a major paradox surrounding Iowa and New Hampshire, whose caucus and primary kick off the voting phase of the Republican and Democratic nomination campaigns: Although both states could well hand victories to populist candidates Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders, both boast unemployment rates well below the national average.

A closer look at their economies, however, reveals a more complicated picture that could better explain the appeal of the Republican real estate magnate and the self-described Democratic Socialist Vermont Senator.

As tweeted by the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, “As Iowa and New Hampshire voters surge toward populist candidates, the unemployment rate in each state: 3.4%, 3.1%.” Both are indeed below the national rate of five percent reported most recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and many of his colleagues re-tweeted these findings.

But job quality is a major concern of voters, too, and although Iowa has also excelled in this respect, New Hampshire has under-performed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly wages in the United States overall rose by 7.80 percent before inflation between the fourth quarter of 2007 (when the last recession began) and the second quarter of 2015 (the latest available data for individual states). In Iowa, the improvement was a much better 9.40 percent. In New Hampshire, however, this measure of pay increased by only 5.68 percent.

Further, over a seven-and-a-half year period, those are pretty paltry numbers for both states, and the figures don’t even count the mild erosion that results from factoring in the official inflation rate. Even worse, these current dollar weekly wage figures had fallen for three straight quarters in both states. As a result, the appeal of populism becomes a good deal less mysterious.

Because weekly wages can change due to the length of the work week, it also pays to look at the hourly wage figures. Based on the weekly hours totals available for the two states and the nation as a whole, hourly wages in the United States advanced by 7.88 percent between the fourth quarter of 2007 through the second quarter of 2015. This rate was slightly faster than the weekly improvement, because the work week shortened from 34.53 hours to 34.50.

In Iowa hourly wages increased by 7.99 percent. This figure was somewhat smaller than the weekly wage improvement, as the state’s average work week lengthened from 34.26 to 34.70 hours. In New Hampshire, the work week lengthened, too, and also pushed the hourly wage advance down to 4.54 percent. Again, these figures are unimpressive over so many years, and could go far toward explaining the strong poll results racked up by Trump and Sanders.

Another neglected measure of state economic performance produces a more mixed picture – on exports, imports, and trade balances. Iowa is one of only 17 states whose international trade contributed to its growth. Between 2009 (when the current economic recovery began) and 2014 (the latest available figures) it not only ran a goods trade surplus, but that surplus widened – from $3.55 billion to $4.54 billion. New Hampshire, by contrast saw its merchandise deficit worsen considerably – from $3.26 billion to $6.99 billion – meaning that it subtracted from the state’s growth.

Of course, many factors, economic and non-economic, will determine the final Iowa and New Hampshire votes, and even when measuring state economies, overall data can obscure significant intra-state variations that can influence the electorates’ perspectives and turnout rates. But if Trump and Sanders perform as expected in these early contests, the wage and trade statistics will bolster the case that, jobless rates notwithstanding, the dreary U.S. economic recovery was very much on voters’ minds