I heard an interesting commentary piece on NPR, to be exact it ran on Marketplace, last evening that links in well with IWF’s upcoming event: Success in the Global Economy: An Agenda for the 110th Congress which is focusing on the US economy in the context of globalization.


The piece notes an article that ran in The Wall Street Journal, “A Globalization Winner Joins in Trade Backlash” that contains this eyebrow raising statistic:



The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted earlier this month found that 60% of voters nationwide agreed with the statement that “foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy.


Of note is that the Marketplace commentary offered up by Paul Krugman was not exactly what I expected. Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times whose latest book is called The Conscience of a Liberal and his warning to Democratic presidential candidates is “Cool the Globalization Rhetoric“. The intro to the piece sums it up this way:



A funny thing’s happening on the way to the Democratic presidential nomination. The Wall Street Journal pointed it out the other day. Iowa voters are worried about the after-effects of globalization. So worried that the major Democratic candidates are working overtime talking down free trade. Globalization is turning into a hot-button campaign issue. Republicans are having their problems, too.


But commentator Paul Krugman says, its effects on the U.S. economy are overblown.


Krugman himself offers this:



Let’s start with the idea that globalization makes it impossible for American workers to earn good wages. The facts say otherwise.


Both pieces offer a good picture of the globalization debate at the grassroots level.