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The robots fixation is unproductive. But so is the lazy way the China Shock has made its way into the political debate, where we talk only about the costs of trade & trade agreements for import-competing manufacturing & ignore the benefits for consumers & exporters (on this 
). https://twitter.com/BaldwinRE/status/1074272672358510592
). https://twitter.com/BaldwinRE/status/1074272672358510592
The China shock is complicated, difficult to measure, and not all about manufacturing jobs:
https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1185190554017173505?s=20 2/
https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1185190554017173505?s=20 2/
The China shock is complicated, and its major effects likely ended over a decade ago: https://twitter.com/TimothyMoreland/status/1156250121140658185?s=20 3/
The China shock is complicated, and quite likely more about past RMB undervaluation than "bad trade policy" 4/
Focusing only on the China shock and manufacturing job losses ignores the massive benefits to US consumers of trade liberalization in general and Chinese imports in particular 5/ https://twitter.com/mcopelov/status/1097620813300277248?s=20
Dems still haven't figured out how to productively talk about trade & its inevitable tradeoffs. Too much is still "mercantilism w/ a human face"+ magical unicorns about "better deals" we'll sign that won't require tradeoffs or better domestic policies 6/ https://twitter.com/mcopelov/status/1135986636641177600?s=20
And it's going to require more tax revenue. As w/ funding health care, one cannot address the domestic distributional consequences of trade while reaping the aggregate welfare benefits without substantially reversing the fiscal policy trend since 1980 7/ https://twitter.com/mcopelov/status/1181018892816277509?s=20
Good time to re-up this excellent must-read piece by @delong: "I could write an entire piece on what has been wrong with America's international economic policy. But NAFTA and China-WTO ain’t it." 8/ https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump
