US lost 3.4 million jobs after China’s entrance into WTO

The massive growth in the US trade deficit with China that came after Beijing joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 has cost an estimated 3.4 million American jobs, according to a new report.

The growth in the trade deficit from 2001 to 2017 hit the US manufacturing sector in particular, where 74 percent of those jobs were lost, according to a study published Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute, an American think tank based in Washington, DC.

“Workers who are displaced from manufacturing jobs tend to drop out of the labor force,” said Robert Scott, a co-author of the report and the director of trade and manufacturing policy research at EPI.

"This report underscores the ongoing trade and jobs crisis" in the US, Scott added..

The 3.4 million figure was calculated by estimating the amount of labor needed to produce a given volume of exports and the labor displaced when imports are substituted.

America incurred a goods deficit of $376 billion with China last year, the largest imbalance with any nation.

The report finds that there were job losses in every single state and county. The San Francisco Bay Area, located in the northern part of California state, was the hardest hit, with nearly 60,000 jobs displaced.

The trade deficit in the computer and electronics industry grew the most, resulting in 1.2 million job losses.

“China’s economy is slowing and the only thing keeping them alive is exports,“ Scott said. “If we eliminate the trade deficit which I think we can do, we would end up hiring more in high tech industries.”

SS