WTH Can We Do to Prevent a Second China Shock? Professor David Autor Explains

China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, normalizing
trade relations with the PRC, was billed to the American public
as a rising tide that lifts all boats. But decades later, many of
the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs to cheaper Chinese
goods have not recovered. And while the first “China shock” left
millions of textile and low-skill manufacturing workers without a
job, Chinese trade practices are now targeting sectors crucial to
American prosperity and national security. How can the U.S.
protect vital industries from unfair trade practices? And why is
it so difficult to help those who lose their job to trade find
new work?


David Autor is the Daniel and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT
Department of Economics and co-director of the National Bureau of
Economic Research Labor Studies Program and the MIT Shaping the
Future of Work Initiative. Autor is also an elected Fellow of the
Econometrics Society, the Society of Labor Economists, and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Faculty Research
Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. In 2019, the Economist
labeled Autor “The academic voice of the American worker.”


Read the transcript here.


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