https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22...krugman-china/
Right, so now Krugman is admitting what Ross Perot said in 1992 -- that globalization allowed to run unfettered would slam lower end US jobs.
It's hardly surprising that Perot, who ran a business, would grasp this while Krugman, who has never made a payroll, would not.
But aside from that, a chain of responsibility emerges. It starts with the Powell Doctrine, which demanded relaxation of all govt involvement in regulation generally, then Reaganism, which put the concept on steroids while championing old school GOP free trade policies, peaked in the 90s with economists like Krugman making the argument globalization's harms were overhyped and washed by its benefits (rather than unevenly distributed, with some suffering horribly while others benefit terrifically), and crested and broke in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, which led to Trumpism -- a wrecking ball aimed into "neoliberal" trade policies.
In the end, it looks like the GOP was both the cause and later undoing of a liberalization of what used to be a central pillar of its platform: Free trade. Lots of people decry the Clintons and Obama for economic centrism which sold out the old core of the Democratic Party. But it appears the GOP blew up its own good thing... By co-opting the moderate Clintonite Democrats and making neoliberal policy appear to be an inevitability and necessity rather than a choice, it left the voters who had been savaged by globalization out in the cold, with no choice but to vote for a protest candidate like Trump, who then made a mess of free trade.
Where lunchbox Joe goes with it no one knows.
