Peterson Institute’s Posen: Focus on Domestic Manufacturing Is Simply a ‘Fetish for Keeping White Males with Low Education in the Powerful Positions’

EXCERPT:

POSEN: “I’m sure I’m gonna piss off both left and right, so I apologize. The fetish for manufacturing is part of the general fetish for keeping white males of low education outside the cities in the powerful positions they’re in in the U.S.. And that is really what’s going on here, because when you look at the cost of manufacturing, and Susan Houseman and her co-authors have — not manufacturing, of training and job displacement and community, Susan Houseman and her co-authors have done a lot of work on this and I’m sure she’ll have a different view than I do. But when I look at the so-called costs of the China shock or the cost of the decline in manufacturing, I always think, compared to what? For decades there was enormous displacement of African Americans in this economy. Every time there was a recession, African American unemployment rate shot up much faster and higher than white unemployment rate.”