In a Washington Post column, Fareed Zakaria gave us yet another of the sermon about how Republicans supported “free trade” before Trump. This is of course not true.
Republicans have done little or nothing to remove the barriers that protect doctors and other highly paid professionals from foreign competition. As a result, our doctors are paid roughly twice as much on average as their counterparts in other wealthy countries, costing us roughly $90 billion a year in higher medical expenses. This swamps the cost of the steel and aluminum tariffs that have gotten “free traders” so upset.
The trade deals have also been quite explicit about increasing protectionism in the form of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections (as in protectionism) quite explicitly redistribute money from the rest of us to folks like Bill Gates. They are incredibly costly in the sense that they are equivalent to extremely large tariffs, often raising the price of the affected product by a factors of ten or a hundred, the equivalent of tariffs of 1000 or 10,000 percent.
And, there is a huge amount of money involved. In the case of prescription drugs alone, patent and related protections cost us more than $370 billion a year, nearly 2.0 percent of GDP. Real free traders don’t support this protectionism.
It is, of course, convenient for those pushing this agenda of upward redistribution to pretend that it is all just free trade and the free market, but this is nonsense. Unfortunately, you won’t see this point made in the Washington Post. You can read about it in my (free) book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.
In a Washington Post column, Fareed Zakaria gave us yet another of the sermon about how Republicans supported “free trade” before Trump. This is of course not true.
Republicans have done little or nothing to remove the barriers that protect doctors and other highly paid professionals from foreign competition. As a result, our doctors are paid roughly twice as much on average as their counterparts in other wealthy countries, costing us roughly $90 billion a year in higher medical expenses. This swamps the cost of the steel and aluminum tariffs that have gotten “free traders” so upset.
The trade deals have also been quite explicit about increasing protectionism in the form of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections (as in protectionism) quite explicitly redistribute money from the rest of us to folks like Bill Gates. They are incredibly costly in the sense that they are equivalent to extremely large tariffs, often raising the price of the affected product by a factors of ten or a hundred, the equivalent of tariffs of 1000 or 10,000 percent.
And, there is a huge amount of money involved. In the case of prescription drugs alone, patent and related protections cost us more than $370 billion a year, nearly 2.0 percent of GDP. Real free traders don’t support this protectionism.
It is, of course, convenient for those pushing this agenda of upward redistribution to pretend that it is all just free trade and the free market, but this is nonsense. Unfortunately, you won’t see this point made in the Washington Post. You can read about it in my (free) book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.
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I see my friend Jared Bernstein beat me to the punch in writing up the new data from Usual Weekly Earnings series. As he points out, the story for the median worker — those right at the middle of the income distribution — has not been good over the last year. Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be making American great again for these folks.
Fortunately, there is a bit better story lower down on the income ladder, as we can see in the figure below.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While real weekly earnings for the median worker have not gone anywhere in the last year, earnings for those at the 25th percentile and the 10th percentile are still headed up. Over the last three years, usual weekly earnings for the 10th percentile worker have risen by 4.8 percent and for 25th percentile worker by 6.5 percent. That’s a pretty good story by almost any standard, although it doesn’t make up for the weakness in the immediate aftermath of the housing crash, much less the three decades of wage stagnation that preceded the Great Recession.
Taking the longer three year period even the earnings for the median worker don’t look bad, rising by 2.9 percent over this period. That’s not great, but in context of 1.0 percent annual productivity growth, at least the median worker is getting her share of the gains. That contrasts with the period from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2015 when median earnings rose by a total of just 1.2 percent.
It looks like tight labor markets are acting as expected towards the bottom end of the income ladder. The picture at the median has not been good over the last year or so, but these numbers are erratic. I expect better news in the second quarter at the median, but we’ll see.
I see my friend Jared Bernstein beat me to the punch in writing up the new data from Usual Weekly Earnings series. As he points out, the story for the median worker — those right at the middle of the income distribution — has not been good over the last year. Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be making American great again for these folks.
Fortunately, there is a bit better story lower down on the income ladder, as we can see in the figure below.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While real weekly earnings for the median worker have not gone anywhere in the last year, earnings for those at the 25th percentile and the 10th percentile are still headed up. Over the last three years, usual weekly earnings for the 10th percentile worker have risen by 4.8 percent and for 25th percentile worker by 6.5 percent. That’s a pretty good story by almost any standard, although it doesn’t make up for the weakness in the immediate aftermath of the housing crash, much less the three decades of wage stagnation that preceded the Great Recession.
Taking the longer three year period even the earnings for the median worker don’t look bad, rising by 2.9 percent over this period. That’s not great, but in context of 1.0 percent annual productivity growth, at least the median worker is getting her share of the gains. That contrasts with the period from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2015 when median earnings rose by a total of just 1.2 percent.
It looks like tight labor markets are acting as expected towards the bottom end of the income ladder. The picture at the median has not been good over the last year or so, but these numbers are erratic. I expect better news in the second quarter at the median, but we’ll see.
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I’m not kidding, that’s what a column by Isaac Stone Fish in The Washington Post told us. We all know the list of complaints against China. They subsidize their exports of many products, costing US workers their jobs. They deliberately prop up the dollar against the yuan, making US goods and services less competitive. Our companies complain that China takes their intellectual property (doesn’t bother me).
But Fish’s Post column tells us the real problem is that Starbucks and other companies looking to profit from the Chinese consumer market may be hit by a government promoted boycott. I suppose if I had a million dollars of Starbuck’s stock, I would be concerned. After all, their profits could fall by 5–10 percent, lowering the stock price proportionately. (Actually, most non-stockholders gain in this story, as big fans of free trade already know. If China pays less to Starbucks in profits, the dollar will be lower, which means that we will have a lower trade deficit, other things equal.)
For the other 99.99 percent of the American people who don’t own large amounts of stock in Starbucks or similarly situated companies, it doesn’t look like a big deal. Of course, it is interesting to see what sort of arguments The Washington Post takes seriously enough to feature on its opinion page.
I’m not kidding, that’s what a column by Isaac Stone Fish in The Washington Post told us. We all know the list of complaints against China. They subsidize their exports of many products, costing US workers their jobs. They deliberately prop up the dollar against the yuan, making US goods and services less competitive. Our companies complain that China takes their intellectual property (doesn’t bother me).
But Fish’s Post column tells us the real problem is that Starbucks and other companies looking to profit from the Chinese consumer market may be hit by a government promoted boycott. I suppose if I had a million dollars of Starbuck’s stock, I would be concerned. After all, their profits could fall by 5–10 percent, lowering the stock price proportionately. (Actually, most non-stockholders gain in this story, as big fans of free trade already know. If China pays less to Starbucks in profits, the dollar will be lower, which means that we will have a lower trade deficit, other things equal.)
For the other 99.99 percent of the American people who don’t own large amounts of stock in Starbucks or similarly situated companies, it doesn’t look like a big deal. Of course, it is interesting to see what sort of arguments The Washington Post takes seriously enough to feature on its opinion page.
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The Post asserted that:
“[…]entering into a new TPP could unify Trump with other trading partners and put new pressure on Beijing to either allow more imports into China or risk being alienated by other Asian countries, that would now received new trade benefits as part of the deal.”
Actually, the countries in the TPP will receive relatively few “new trade benefits” as a result of the TPP. Six of the other eleven countries in the pact already have trade deals with the United States, which means there are very few remaining barriers to be reduced. (One of the other five countries is Brunei, whose trade patterns will probably not cause China’s government to lose much sleep.)
If the pact was intended to hurt China, its designers did not do a very good job. It has lax rules of origins requirements. In some cases, for example most car parts, an item with as little as 35 percent value added from TPP countries could qualify for preferential treatment.
This means, for example, that car parts produced in China, with Vietnam adding 35 percent of the value (possibly in a Chinese owned firm) would get preferential treatment under the TPP. Since these requirements are difficult to enforce rigorously, it is likely that some items with as much as 70 percent value-added coming from China will get preferential treatment under the TPP. That does not sound like an effective way to exclude Chinese products. (NAFTA’s rules of origins for car parts required 62.5 percent of the value-added to come from the countries in the pact.)
The TPP also includes provisions that will make member countries pay more money for prescription drugs due to longer and stronger patent and related monopolies. It also includes provisions on e-commerce that would likely make it more difficult to crack down on the sorts of abuses we are now hearing about from Facebook. These features, which are major parts of the pact, are not likely to help the United States build an effective coalition against China on trade or anything else.
The piece also tells readers that Trump has:
“[…]shown a general reluctance to enter into multilateral trade deals because he believes these allow the United States to be ripped off.”
It is not clear how the Post knows what Trump “believes.” It can tell readers what he says, but given the frequency with which he reverses his positions, it seems unlikely he believes anything.
The Post asserted that:
“[…]entering into a new TPP could unify Trump with other trading partners and put new pressure on Beijing to either allow more imports into China or risk being alienated by other Asian countries, that would now received new trade benefits as part of the deal.”
Actually, the countries in the TPP will receive relatively few “new trade benefits” as a result of the TPP. Six of the other eleven countries in the pact already have trade deals with the United States, which means there are very few remaining barriers to be reduced. (One of the other five countries is Brunei, whose trade patterns will probably not cause China’s government to lose much sleep.)
If the pact was intended to hurt China, its designers did not do a very good job. It has lax rules of origins requirements. In some cases, for example most car parts, an item with as little as 35 percent value added from TPP countries could qualify for preferential treatment.
This means, for example, that car parts produced in China, with Vietnam adding 35 percent of the value (possibly in a Chinese owned firm) would get preferential treatment under the TPP. Since these requirements are difficult to enforce rigorously, it is likely that some items with as much as 70 percent value-added coming from China will get preferential treatment under the TPP. That does not sound like an effective way to exclude Chinese products. (NAFTA’s rules of origins for car parts required 62.5 percent of the value-added to come from the countries in the pact.)
The TPP also includes provisions that will make member countries pay more money for prescription drugs due to longer and stronger patent and related monopolies. It also includes provisions on e-commerce that would likely make it more difficult to crack down on the sorts of abuses we are now hearing about from Facebook. These features, which are major parts of the pact, are not likely to help the United States build an effective coalition against China on trade or anything else.
The piece also tells readers that Trump has:
“[…]shown a general reluctance to enter into multilateral trade deals because he believes these allow the United States to be ripped off.”
It is not clear how the Post knows what Trump “believes.” It can tell readers what he says, but given the frequency with which he reverses his positions, it seems unlikely he believes anything.
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Once again Robert Samuelson takes a big swing and misses in his Washington Post column today. He argues that schools in states like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma are underfunded and unable to pay their teachers a decent wage because of the cost for caring for the elderly.
This is wrong for two obvious reasons. First, these are all low-tax states. They could try something like raising taxes on higher income households. This is one way to get money.
The other problem is that a main reason why it costs so much to care for our elderly is that we pay our doctors and drug companies twice as much for their services and products as people in other wealthy countries. If we paid the same prices for our health care as people in Canada or Germany, it would free up more than $1 trillion annually for schools and other worthwhile items.
But The Washington Post doesn’t like to call attention to the incomes of the affluent, they would rather beat up on senior citizens.
Once again Robert Samuelson takes a big swing and misses in his Washington Post column today. He argues that schools in states like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma are underfunded and unable to pay their teachers a decent wage because of the cost for caring for the elderly.
This is wrong for two obvious reasons. First, these are all low-tax states. They could try something like raising taxes on higher income households. This is one way to get money.
The other problem is that a main reason why it costs so much to care for our elderly is that we pay our doctors and drug companies twice as much for their services and products as people in other wealthy countries. If we paid the same prices for our health care as people in Canada or Germany, it would free up more than $1 trillion annually for schools and other worthwhile items.
But The Washington Post doesn’t like to call attention to the incomes of the affluent, they would rather beat up on senior citizens.
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Many more of us are food consumers than farmers, yet somehow the prospect that a trade war with China will lead to lower prices for soybeans and other agricultural products is never reported as a positive development. Undoubtedly, the pain to farmers is much more important to them than the small benefit that many of us may see in the form of lower food prices, but reporters have felt it important to tell us about the small cost that many of us might see as a result of higher steel and aluminum prices as a result of Trump’s tariffs on these products.
This seems like a serious asymmetry in reporting on this topic.
Many more of us are food consumers than farmers, yet somehow the prospect that a trade war with China will lead to lower prices for soybeans and other agricultural products is never reported as a positive development. Undoubtedly, the pain to farmers is much more important to them than the small benefit that many of us may see in the form of lower food prices, but reporters have felt it important to tell us about the small cost that many of us might see as a result of higher steel and aluminum prices as a result of Trump’s tariffs on these products.
This seems like a serious asymmetry in reporting on this topic.
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I see that five former Democratic chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers warned of an impending debt crisis in a column in the Washington Post. They tell us that current and projected future levels of deficits and debts will soon send interest rates soaring, crashing the economy. While I am skeptical about the basic proposition for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly Japan’s persistently low interest and inflation rates in spite of a debt-to-GDP ratio that is two and a half times ours, but let me offer a solution: selling off patent monopolies.
We can sell off patent monopolies in all sorts of areas, auctioning off as many as are necessary to make our deficit hawks happy. For example, we can sell off a patent on the idea of turning left at a fork in the road. If people try to get around the patent by taking three rights, we can sell off the patent on turning right at the fork in the road. And of course, we can sell off a patent on turning around and going in the opposite direction to take care of these wise asses.
We can sell off patents on boiling water and making ice. We can make as long a list as we like, there are no shortage of items which we can turn into patent monopolies.
Is this horrible economic policy? Of course it is, but our deficit hawks never pay attention to the obligations we impose on future taxpayers by granting patent and copyright monopolies, they just look at the debt. So, if that s all they care about, let’s solve the debt problem by issuing more patent and copyright monopolies and make many of our country’s leading economists happy.
And, just to be clear, we are talking about enormous sums of money. In the case of prescription drugs alone, patent and related protections cost us around $370 billion a year. This is almost 2.0 percent of GDP or more than twice the burden of interest service on the debt, net of money refunded by the Fed. (This is discussed in my [free] book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.)
We could clearly raise enough money by selling off various patent and copyright monopolies to get our debt down to whatever size is needed to make our economists happy. It’s stupid policy, but as the old saying goes, economists are not very good at economics.
I see that five former Democratic chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers warned of an impending debt crisis in a column in the Washington Post. They tell us that current and projected future levels of deficits and debts will soon send interest rates soaring, crashing the economy. While I am skeptical about the basic proposition for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly Japan’s persistently low interest and inflation rates in spite of a debt-to-GDP ratio that is two and a half times ours, but let me offer a solution: selling off patent monopolies.
We can sell off patent monopolies in all sorts of areas, auctioning off as many as are necessary to make our deficit hawks happy. For example, we can sell off a patent on the idea of turning left at a fork in the road. If people try to get around the patent by taking three rights, we can sell off the patent on turning right at the fork in the road. And of course, we can sell off a patent on turning around and going in the opposite direction to take care of these wise asses.
We can sell off patents on boiling water and making ice. We can make as long a list as we like, there are no shortage of items which we can turn into patent monopolies.
Is this horrible economic policy? Of course it is, but our deficit hawks never pay attention to the obligations we impose on future taxpayers by granting patent and copyright monopolies, they just look at the debt. So, if that s all they care about, let’s solve the debt problem by issuing more patent and copyright monopolies and make many of our country’s leading economists happy.
And, just to be clear, we are talking about enormous sums of money. In the case of prescription drugs alone, patent and related protections cost us around $370 billion a year. This is almost 2.0 percent of GDP or more than twice the burden of interest service on the debt, net of money refunded by the Fed. (This is discussed in my [free] book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.)
We could clearly raise enough money by selling off various patent and copyright monopolies to get our debt down to whatever size is needed to make our economists happy. It’s stupid policy, but as the old saying goes, economists are not very good at economics.
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Seriously, the NYT ran a piece with the headline, “why Trump’s tariffs could raise the cost of a hip replacement.” The point of the piece is that we now import a substantial amount of medical equipment and devices from China. This means that if we have to pay 25 percent more, then the price of these items in the United States will be higher. This means that operations like hip replacements that might require some equipment now purchased from China will cost more.
Okay, let’s try to use some numbers here. The piece tells us that we import $3 billion a year in medical equipment from China. According to the Commerce Department, we spent over $90 billion on medical equipment and devices last year (National Income and Product Accounts, Table 5.5.5U, Line 6). This means that the items imported from China came to a bit more than 3 percent of the total.
If the tariffs are passed on in full (a very questionable assumption, both because of the large market here and the fact that actual production costs are a small fraction of the price of these patent-protected items), then the price of medical equipment would rise on average about 0.8 percent. Most of the cost of major surgeries like hip replacements go to the doctor and hospital, not the artificial device, but let’s say that half of the cost is the device itself.
This means that the cost of your hip replacement surgery will rise by a whopping 0.4 percent as a result of the Trump tariffs! The NYT should look for some better ammunition if it wants to seriously push its case.
Addendum
Robert Salzberg points out to me that if the artificial hip itself were produced in China, then the price increase resulting from the tariff would be 25 percent on the implant, not 0.8 percent as I assume above. In this post, I assumed that implants are as likely to be produced in China as medical equipment more generally, but Robert’s point is worth noting.
He also points me to an old NYT piece on medical travel, which gives the price of manufacturing an implant at $350 in the United States and $150 in Asia. This piece gives further evidence that any increases in the price of implants from China due to the tariff will be virtually invisible in the cost of the procedure.
It is also yet another reminder of the enormous potential gains from free trade in medical travel. If any of our politicians actually supported free trade, the gains from setting up an institutional structure (i.e. rules for insurers and malpractice) to facilitate medical travel would swamp the gains from trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP. Unfortunately, most politicians are staunchly protectionist when it comes to measures that might reduce the income of doctors, hospitals, and medical equipment manufacturers. They only are interested in reducing trade barriers when most of the losers are less-educated and less politically powerful workers.
Seriously, the NYT ran a piece with the headline, “why Trump’s tariffs could raise the cost of a hip replacement.” The point of the piece is that we now import a substantial amount of medical equipment and devices from China. This means that if we have to pay 25 percent more, then the price of these items in the United States will be higher. This means that operations like hip replacements that might require some equipment now purchased from China will cost more.
Okay, let’s try to use some numbers here. The piece tells us that we import $3 billion a year in medical equipment from China. According to the Commerce Department, we spent over $90 billion on medical equipment and devices last year (National Income and Product Accounts, Table 5.5.5U, Line 6). This means that the items imported from China came to a bit more than 3 percent of the total.
If the tariffs are passed on in full (a very questionable assumption, both because of the large market here and the fact that actual production costs are a small fraction of the price of these patent-protected items), then the price of medical equipment would rise on average about 0.8 percent. Most of the cost of major surgeries like hip replacements go to the doctor and hospital, not the artificial device, but let’s say that half of the cost is the device itself.
This means that the cost of your hip replacement surgery will rise by a whopping 0.4 percent as a result of the Trump tariffs! The NYT should look for some better ammunition if it wants to seriously push its case.
Addendum
Robert Salzberg points out to me that if the artificial hip itself were produced in China, then the price increase resulting from the tariff would be 25 percent on the implant, not 0.8 percent as I assume above. In this post, I assumed that implants are as likely to be produced in China as medical equipment more generally, but Robert’s point is worth noting.
He also points me to an old NYT piece on medical travel, which gives the price of manufacturing an implant at $350 in the United States and $150 in Asia. This piece gives further evidence that any increases in the price of implants from China due to the tariff will be virtually invisible in the cost of the procedure.
It is also yet another reminder of the enormous potential gains from free trade in medical travel. If any of our politicians actually supported free trade, the gains from setting up an institutional structure (i.e. rules for insurers and malpractice) to facilitate medical travel would swamp the gains from trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP. Unfortunately, most politicians are staunchly protectionist when it comes to measures that might reduce the income of doctors, hospitals, and medical equipment manufacturers. They only are interested in reducing trade barriers when most of the losers are less-educated and less politically powerful workers.
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I guess “terrific” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. According to the Washington Post, the average monthly before-subsidy premium for a plan purchased in the health care exchanges was $621, an increase of 30 percent from 2017. For some reason, this rise in premiums doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention as the increase in premiums while President Obama was still in office.
I guess “terrific” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. According to the Washington Post, the average monthly before-subsidy premium for a plan purchased in the health care exchanges was $621, an increase of 30 percent from 2017. For some reason, this rise in premiums doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention as the increase in premiums while President Obama was still in office.
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