The new Atlantic monthly contains an essay by Clive Crook, formerly of The Economist, who does what Nicholas Kristof of the Times would not do: which is at least engage with those economists who dare to doubt the free trade nostrums he holds so dear.
Kristof has been beating this drum for a while, most recently beating up Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, here ($), for trying to "drag this country backward" with "cowboy diplomacy," in the face of George W. Bush, who "has been steadfast on trade." Trade, the pundit explains, "is a particularly useful prism through which to look at politicians, for it offers a litmus test of political courage and economic leadership. That's because there are no political benefits to a candidate who supports free trade, but considerable benefits to the country." Kristof did not bother to address himself to counter-arguments, nor mention to his readers that many respected and admired economists -- including such former free trade stalwarts as Alan Blinder, Lawrence Summers, George A. Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, and even former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- are in the process of questioning the relevance of the economic orthodoxy he is asserting. Nor did he note that many important economists, including the late Frank Taussig, Dani Rodrik, David Card, Dean Baker, and others associated with Washington's Economic Policy Institute, had already created a significant body of work calling into question many of the claims of the free-traders and laying the groundwork for an alternative path. (Indeed, Mr. Kristof's own newspaper had covered this debate thoroughly just two weeks earlier, in an article headlined, "In Economics Departments, a Growing Will to Debate Fundamental Assumptions" here ($).) Instead, he terms it a "litmus test of political courage and economic leadership" to defy the specific demands of the people who elected you; for if there was a single issue that united the Democratic victors in 2006 and separated them from their Republican opponents -- many of whom also questioned the wisdom and competence of George W. Bush's military policies, it was the insistence that they would take a tougher line on trade -- with China having been identified as the primary culprit. And yet to Kristof, all of these people are merely "stak[ing] out myopic positions for political calculations," whose arguments, like those of Ross Perot, "appealed to Know-Nothing nativists."
Read the whole Altercation here.