Trade Liberalization Earns Mixed Marks As Fighter of Poverty
The newest way to sell trade pacts is to trumpet how much they help poor countries. Thus, a new round of global trade talks is dubbed "the development round." And President Bush promotes a Central American trade deal as a way to bring "good jobs and higher labor standards" to the region.
While the pitch may assuage liberal guilt and make conservatives feel compassionate, trade liberalization has a mixed record as a poverty fighter. China and some Southeast Asian nations have lifted millions out of poverty through jobs created by foreign investment and exports. But Latin America, which has followed the same free-trade model, remains impoverished.
"Trying to sell trade policy as a high-powered way for helping the poor -- you can't do it with intellectual honesty," says Gary Hufbauer, an economist at the free-trade Institute for International Economics. Trade aids overall growth, he argues, but the benefits aren't targeted toward lower-income people.
A different policy would help: opening the borders of wealthy nations to more temporary workers. More work visas would equal more wealth for the world's poor. If rich countries allowed in enough temporary workers to increase their overall work force by 3%, that would raise global income by $150 billion annually, with the bulk of the gain going to low-income workers, according to calculations by World Bank economist L. Alan Winters. "Even a relatively small change in labor mobility is worth at least as much as any reduction in quotas and tariffs," he says.
Why? Decades of global trade talks have already slashed trade barriers, so there is less to gain by further liberalization. But bars on migration remain high and are frequently aimed at the poor; easing the restraints would produce big returns.
Migration helps the poor in a number of ways. Even when migrant laborers take dead-end U.S. jobs, they earn far more than they did at home. The North American Free Trade Agreement helped lift average Mexican wages by about 10%, says Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California at San Diego. But a Mexican who finds work in the U.S. earns, on average, about 2.5 times as much as he did in Mexico.
Migrant workers wire some of their salaries to their families, increasing spending and consumption in poor nations. Overall, migrant workers remit about $100 billion a year, the International Monetary Fund estimates, a sum that dwarfs foreign aid.
Some migrants also use the skills and outlooks they learn in wealthy countries to start businesses back home. Romania's strawberry-export business owes a lot to Romanians who once labored in Spanish fields, Harvard economist Devesh Kapur says.
The gains from migration come at a cost, of course. Many of those who leave poor nations never go back, draining talent from home nations. Families are separated for long periods of time when men migrate and their wives and children don't. Some families get so used to receiving checks from abroad that it can breed a welfare mentality.
A migration surge would also further undermine wages for low-skilled native workers in the U.S. and Europe, who compete for low-end jobs. That's one reason that political opposition to increased migration is fierce. When the U.S. agreed to a tiny number of work visas as part of free-trade agreements with Singapore and Chile, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner was so angered that he warned U.S. negotiators not to include immigration policy in any future trade deal.
So far, the U.S. hasn't. The Central American Free Trade Agreement with El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, which Congress will vote on shortly, doesn't deal with migrant workers, much to the consternation of regional critics.
The U.S. and Europe also are balking at proposals by India to increase visas for skilled workers as part of a world trade pact. Other poor nations want to increase visas for construction workers. A U.S. trade official says developing nations should ease restrictions first on workers from neighboring poor nations as a way to spur growth.
To have a chance of persuading politicians in the U.S. and Europe to increase work visas, negotiators would have to find better ways to ensure temporary workers actually go home -- rather than stay permanently as illegal aliens. Governments could withhold part of foreign workers' pay until they leave. Home countries could include work abroad in calculating Social Security benefits.
The top needed change would be for wealthy countries to better train their own workers for higher-paying jobs, rather than abandon them to fight immigrants for unskilled work. Part of the training's cost could come from taxing new migrants' employers.
富国增加外籍劳工或成助贫良方
兜售贸易协定的最新方法就是鼓吹它们能给穷国带来多大的帮助。因此，新一轮全球贸易谈判被称为“发展回合”的谈判。美国总统布什(Bush)就将中美洲的贸易协定称为是能给该地区带来良好的就业机会和更高的劳动力标准。
虽然这种论调可能减轻贸易自由主义人士的愧疚，使保守主义人士感到理解，但贸易自由化在应对贫困方面的纪录好坏不一。中国和部分东南亚国家通过外国投资和出口创造的就业机会已经让数百万人口摆脱了贫困，但追随同样自由贸易模式的拉丁美洲依然保持贫困。
研究自由贸易的美国国际经济研究所(Institute for International Economics)经济学家Gary Hufbauer称，试图通过将其描述成一种帮助穷国的有效方式来推销贸易政策，你不可能做到知性的诚实。他认为，贸易确实推动整体经济增长，但是它带来的好处并不特别针对低收入人口。
另一种不同的政策将有所帮助：开放富国边境、吸纳更多临时工人。对于穷国而言，更多的工作签证就等同于更多的财富。根据世界银行(World Bank)经济学家L. Alan Winters的估算，如果富国允许吸纳足够的临时工推动其总体劳动力增长3%，那么此举将推动全球收入每年增加1,500亿美元，而其中大部分将流向低收入人群。他说，劳动力流动性即使出现了相对较小的变化，它起码也相当于任何减少配额和关税措施带来的效果。
为什么呢？数十年来的全球贸易谈判已经使得贸易壁垒大量减少，因此靠进一步自由贸易谈判取得的收效也随之减少了。但移民政策的门坎仍居高不下，而且通常针对穷国而设；放宽有关限制将带来相当大的好处。
移民在诸多方面有助于穷国的发展。即便外籍劳工在美国干的是毫无前途的工作，其收入也远远高于他们在本土工作的收入。加利福尼亚大学圣地牙哥分校(University of California in San Diego)经济学家Gordon Hanson称，《北美自由贸易协定》(The North American Free Trade Agreement)推动墨西哥人的平均工资增长了10%左右。但一个在美国找到工作的墨西哥人的收入大约是他在墨西哥时的2.5倍。
外籍劳工将部分薪资汇给他们的家人，从而增加了穷国的支出和消费。据国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)预测，总体来看，外籍劳工每年的汇款约为1,000亿美元，远远超出外国援助的数目。
一些外籍劳工运用他们在富裕国家学到的技能和见识回国创业。哈佛大学(Harvard)经济学家Devesh Kapur称，罗马尼亚草莓出口行业的发展要归功于那些曾在西班牙田地里劳作的罗马尼亚人。
当然外籍劳工的流入也会带来问题。许多外籍劳工离开自己的穷国后就不再返回，从而导致本土国家的人才流失。移民还导致家庭长期两地分居的现象。
移民大幅增加还会进一步削弱美国和欧洲本国低技能工人的工资，他们会竞相争夺低端工作机会。这也是政界对增加移民的反对之声如此之高的原因。作为与新加坡和智利达成的自由贸易协定的一部分，美国曾同意向两国发放少量工作签证，众议院司法委员会(House Judiciary Committee)主席James Sensenbrenner非常生气，他警告美国谈判专家再也不要将移民政策纳入任何未来的贸易协定当中。
之后美国再也没有这样做过。与萨尔瓦多、哥斯达黎加、洪都拉斯、危地马拉、尼加拉瓜和多米尼加共和国签署的中美洲自由贸易协定就没有涉及外籍劳工问题，这很大程度上是因为担心遭受国内人士的抨击。
针对印度提出的、把增加熟练工人工作签证作为全球贸易协定一部分的提议，美国和欧洲也不肯让步。其他穷国则希望增加对建筑工人的签证。一位美国贸易官员称，发展中国家应当首先放宽对来自邻近穷国劳工的签证限制，以此作为促进增长的一个途径。
为了说服美国和欧洲的政界增加工作签证，贸易谈判代表必须要找到更好的办法来确保临时工人返回家园－－而不是作为非法移民永久性地滞留下来。政府可以保留外籍劳工的部分薪资直到他们离开为止。而其本土政府可以在计算社会保障福利的时候将海外劳工包括在内。
最急需的改变是富裕国家要更好地培训自己的劳动力，让他们争取高薪职位，而不是对其置之不理，听任他们与外籍劳工竞争低技能的工作职位。培训成本的一部分可以来自于新移民雇主的税收。
