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Trade: Winners and Losers in the North and South

March 10, 2017 by Julián Messina - Andrew Powell Leave a Comment


After the Brexit referendum and the US election, commentators on all sides have sparred over who are the winners and losers when it comes to trade. Most economists agree that more trade on the whole is good, but that its impact can vary dramatically. The relationship between trade and inequality is then less obvious.

For starters, the impacts of trade on inequality may be very different on industrialized and emerging economies. In the former, where the supply of skilled labor is more abundant, trade may well push wages for those near the bottom further down – think of more unskilled jobs being shipped overseas where unskilled labor is cheaper. But in emerging economies, where unskilled labor is more abundant, the demand for less skilled workers may rise with the exact opposite effect. According to this view, trade should lower inequality in emerging economies. On the other hand, new trade theories focusing on the productivity of different types of firms, might support a rise in inequality just as in richer nations.

So what happened in Latin America? In the great trade liberalization of the 1990s, wages in protected industries, many of which were intensive in low-skilled employment, adjusted downwards to survive foreign competition. New, high-paying jobs were created too. An interesting case study is the impact of NAFTA on Mexico. The introduction of the free trade agreement destroyed some low-value-added manufacturing jobs in previously protected industries. But it created better paying jobs by linking Mexican firms to their upstream North American counterparts. Moreover, it boosted exports, likely producing generally positive impacts; there was a boost to wages and a significant reduction in poverty.

The 2000s were different. Commodity exporters, particularly in South America, benefited from the unprecedented China boom. China grew at an average rate of more than 10% per annum for 10 years becoming the second largest global economy― akin to adding an economy around the size of Argentina every year! Changes across and within industries in Latin America in favor of low-skilled workers at a time when the region had acquired more skills created shortages of low-skilled laborers, and increased their wages. But clearly there was a lot more going on than changes in trade that favored reductions in inequality. Some countries took advantage of the fast growth to modify labor market regulations (increasing and tightening enforcement of minimum wages) and others deepened safety nets such as conditional cash transfers.

The relationship between trade, poverty and inequality is complex and likely to be different in Latin America and the Caribbean than in the United States and the U.K. Changes in trade are always likely to produce winners and losers at a microeconomic level. Governments can implement policies to compensate the losers and ensure that those that end up unemployed have alternatives. They can provide programs, for example, for workers to acquire necessary skills. The IDB’s forthcoming flagship, Better Learning: Public Policy for Skills Development, reviews what public policies work, and do not work, to boost skills in the workforce. Higher growth may produce rewards for many people in many nations. But its potentially negative impacts on the few who do not benefit should be alleviated.

The forthcoming 2017 IDB Latin American and Caribbean macroeconomic report considers the positives and negatives of trade integration in the region. It also contains a concrete proposal on how the region should move forward and find a route to higher growth in a new and very uncertain global trading environment. Sign up here to receive an email when the report is available for downloading.


Filed Under: Macroeconomics and Finance, Social Issues Tagged With: #China, #emergingeconomies, #inequality, #LatAm, #Trade, #wages

Julián Messina

Julián Messina is a Lead Research Economist at the research department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Prior to joining the IDB, he worked at the World Bank and the European Central Bank, and he has taught at the Universities of Barcelona GSE, Georgetown, Girona, Frankfurt and Mainz. His research interests include labor economics, applied macroeconomics and the economics of education. He is author of three books, including two World Bank Latin American Flagship Reports. His work has been published in academic journals including the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Journal, Journal of the European Economic Association and Labour Economics, and he is often featured in popular blogs and media outlets including The Economist. He has extensive experience advising governments in Latin America, Europe and Asia. Dr. Messina obtained his PhD. in Economics at the European University Institute in 2002.

Andrew Powell

Andrew Powell is the Principal Advisor in the Research Department (RES). He holds a Ba, MPhil. and DPhil. (PhD) from the University of Oxford. Through 1994 he dedicated himself to academia in the United Kingdom as Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and Associate Professor (Lecturer) at London University and the University of Warwick. In 1995, he joined the Central Bank of Argentina and was named Chief Economist in 1996. He represented Argentina as a G20/G22 deputy and as member of three G22 working groups (on crisis resolution, financial system strengthening and transparency) in the late 1990’s. In 2001, he returned to academia, joining the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires as Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Finance. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the World Bank, IMF and Harvard University. He joined the IDB Research Department in 2005 as Lead Research Economist and in 2008 served as Regional Economic Advisor for the Caribbean Region until returning to the Research Department as the Principal Advisor. He has published numerous academic papers in leading economic journals in areas including commodity markets, risk management, the role of multilaterals, regulation, banking and international finance. Current projects include new papers on capital flows and corporate balance sheets, on sovereign debt restructuring and on the preferred creditor status of multilateral development banks.

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