THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS 

OF U.S. TRADE

 

May 2015
2

Table of Contents

Ten Facts about U.S. Trade .......................................................................................................................3

I. Introduction..........................................................................................................................................5

II. The Economic Effects of U.S. Trade Integration..............................................................................7

Classic Gains from Trade ..............................................................................................................7

Enhanced Productivity ...........................................................................................................7

More Innovative Activity .....................................................................................................11

Higher Living Standards .......................................................................................................12

Labor Market Implications of Trade and Trade Agreements................................................14

Higher Wages........................................................................................................................14

Development Effects of Trade...................................................................................................22

Increased Economic Growth ...............................................................................................22

Better Working Conditions..................................................................................................24

Stronger Environmental Protection ...................................................................................26

Broader Inclusion and Participation...................................................................................29

III. Sector-Specific Trends in U.S. Trade ...............................................................................................33

The Rise of Services Trade..........................................................................................................35

Manufacturing Rebound ............................................................................................................38

Robust Agricultural Trade ..........................................................................................................40

IV. Current Trade Negotiations..............................................................................................................43

Trans-Pacific Partnership............................................................................................................45

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ...................................................................46

V. Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................47

References.................................................................................................................................................48
3

Ten Facts about U.S. Trade

President Obama’s top priority is to make sure the United States builds on its economic 

momentum by continuing to grow businesses, create jobs, and expand the middle class. That is 

why the President is committed to free and fair trade agreements that level the playing field and 

benefit American businesses and workers. This report presents original empirical evidence, 

alongside a summary of the extensive economic literature, on a broad range of effects of 

enhanced U.S. trade and U.S. free trade agreements (FTAs).

1 Highlights from this report include: 

1. U.S. businesses must overcome an average tariff hurdle of 6.8 percent, in addition to 

numerous non-tariff barriers (NTBs), to serve the roughly 95 percent of the world’s 

customers outside our borders. The United States is already one of the most open markets 

in the world, meaning that the main impact of new trade agreements would be to decrease 

foreign barriers to U.S. exports. In 2014, almost 70 percent of U.S. imports crossed our 

borders duty-free, but many of our trading partners maintain higher tariffs that create steep 

barriers to U.S. exports. 

2. Exporters pay higher wages, and the average industry’s export growth over the past twenty 

years translated into $1,300 higher annual earnings for the typical employee. Studies of U.S. 

manufacturing industries document that, on average, export-intensive industries pay workers 

up to 18 percent more than non-export-intensive industries. Controlling for industry, 

location, and worker characteristics, CEA finds that the average industry’s increase in exports 

in the 1990s and 2000s translated into an additional $1,300 in annual earnings for the typical

middle-class worker. 

3. Middle-class Americans gain more than a quarter of their purchasing power from trade.

Trade allows U.S. consumers to buy a wider variety of goods at lower prices, raising real wages 

and helping families purchase more with their current incomes. This is especially important 

for middle-class consumers who spend a larger share of their disposable income on heavilytraded food and clothing items. Compared to a world with no trade, median-income

consumers gain an estimated 29 percent of their purchasing power from trade.

4. Over the past twenty years, the average industry’s increase in exports translated into 8 

percent higherlabor productivity, or almost a quarter of the total productivity increase over 

that time. About half of all U.S. imports are inputs that businesses use to produce final goods, 

which lowers firms’ production costs by making a greater variety of inputs available at lower 

prices. Additionally, economic research shows that trade increases productivity for 

businesses and the economy as a whole.

5. When countries make trade deals with China, outsourcing of American jobs increases, while 

U.S. trade agreements do not change the rate of U.S. investment abroad. Trade agreements 

 

1 This report complements work already published in Chapter 7 of the Council of Economic Advisers’ (CEA) 2015 

Economic Report of the President. 
4

with China offer countries preferential access to the vast Chinese market while accepting low 

labor and environmental standards. U.S. FTAs, on the other hand, raise standards across the 

board and help U.S. businesses export to foreign markets while still producing goods here. 

U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in FTA partner countries shows little to no change after 

completion of a trade agreement. However, China’s completion of a trade agreement 

increases U.S. FDI in China’s FTA partners. 

6. Trade raises labor standards and incomes abroad, helping developing countries lift people 

out of poverty and expanding markets for U.S. exports. Research suggests that trade has 

helped decrease poverty by raising wages around the world and also finds that expanding 

U.S. market access promotes higher-quality employment in less-developed countries as 

workers shift from informal to formal employment. Enforceable labor standards, which form 

a central part of trade agreements the United States is currently negotiating, have also 

complemented trade’s direct effects.

7. For every 1 percent increase in income as a result of trade liberalization, pollution 

concentrations fall by 1 percent. This happens because the adoption of clean technologies 

spread through trade more than offsets emissions resulting from increased transportation or 

production. Current trade agreements amplify these effects: the Administration includes 

environmental commitments as a core part of its values-driven trade approach, including 

commitments to protect oceans, combat wildlife trafficking, and eliminate illegal logging. 

8. Trade helps lower the gender wage gap, with a 10 percentage point decrease in tariffs 

leading to a 1 percentage point drop in the wage gap. CEA studied the relationship between 

tariffs and the gender wage gap, finding that industries with larger tariff declines saw greater 

reductions in the wage gap. Trade also decreases discrimination based on race and 

immigration status and is correlated with better human-rights conditions.

9. The United States has a $43 billion surplus in agricultural trade and is a worldwide leader 

in agriculture, employing almost 1.5 million American workers. In 2014, one-half of the 

wheat, rice, and soybeans produced in the United States was exported, along with over twothirds of almonds and walnuts and four-fifths of cotton and pistachios. The U.S. Department 

of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that every $1 in agricultural exports stimulates another $1.22 

in related business activity, so that agricultural exports increased total economic output by 

almost $350 billion in 2014. 

10. The United States is the global leader in services exports. Over the past 34 years, real U.S. 

services exports have grown more than seven-fold, particularly in areas like insurance and 

financial services. As a result, knocking down barriers to services trade is especially important 

for the American workforce. Compared to the average across 40 other countries, including 

most advanced economies and large emerging markets, the United States has lower trade 

barriers in 14 out of 18 different service sectors. By one estimate, if U.S. services reached the 

same export potential as manufactured goods, total U.S. exports could increase by as much 

as $800 billion. 
5

I. Introduction

The world’s economies are more interconnected than ever before. Since the middle of the last 

century, declining policy barriers, transportation costs, and communication costs have driven a 

swift rise in world trade and foreign investment, far outpacing the growth in world output. Even 

so, the potential economic gains from trade for the United States are far from exhausted. U.S. 

businesses must overcome an average tariff hurdle near 6.8 percent and countless non-tariff 

measures to serve the roughly three-quarters of world purchasing power and more than 95 

percent of world population that resides outside America's borders.

Expanding trade allows production inputs such as labor and capital to be used more efficiently, 

which raises overall productivity. U.S. businesses that grow in response to increased market 

access abroad support additional job opportunities. These firms are more productive and rely 

more on capital and skilled workers, on average, than similar non-exporting firms. Partly because 

of this, the wages paid by exporting firms tend to be higher than wages paid by non-exporters in 

the same industry. In particular, evidence for the United States suggests that, in manufacturing, 

average wages in exporting firms and industries are up to 18 percent higher than average wages 

in non-exporting firms and industries.

In addition, international trade helps U.S. households’ budgets go further. Because our trading 

partners also specialize in the goods and services for which they are relatively more productive, 

the prices of those goods and services in the United States are lower than if we could only 

consume what we produce. Trade also offers a much greater diversity of consumption 

opportunities, from year-round fresh fruit to affordable clothing. In fact, research estimates that 

the variety of imported goods increased approximately three-fold between 1972 and 2001. This 

increase in variety provides U.S. consumers with value equivalent to 2.6 percent of gross 

domestic product (GDP). According to other estimates, the reduction in U.S. tariffs since World 

War II contributed an additional 7.3 percent to U.S. GDP, or approximately $1.3 trillion in 2014.

Distributed equally, that translates into an additional over $10,000 in income per American 

household.

By increasing global production and consumption opportunities, international trade can promote 

world economic growth and development. Trade among nations offers a mechanism to reduce 

global poverty, which may decrease child labor and pull developing-country workers into jobs 

with improved working conditions. Trade can also be a force toward the empowerment of 

traditionally marginalized groups; for example, some empirical evidence suggests that decreased 

discrimination against women is related to the effects of global competition brought about by 

trade. Trade also facilitates the spread of new green technologies throughout the world, which

decreases emissions and improves air and water quality. 

Because the process of globalization shifts resources within national economies, however, it can 

also create challenges in areas like income inequality. For this reason, it is critical that 

globalization is managed—in terms of both the types of trade agreements the United States 

enters into and the domestic policies that are in place—in a way that ensures that more 
6

Americans can take advantage of the opportunities afforded by trade, while being better able to 

meet any challenges trade creates. Therefore, President Obama’s values-driven trade policy

seeks to do what is best for U.S. businesses and workers by enforcing international agreements 

that improve labor and environmental standards around the world, combat corruption, and 

strengthen the rule of law abroad. Encouraging such trade agreements maximizes globalization’s 

benefits while minimizing globalization’s side effects. For example, new U.S. trade agreements 

promote and enforce the rights of workers abroad, “leveling up” rather than “leveling down” and

risking workers’ rights in the United States. The Administration’s domestic policies, such as skills 

training, infrastructure investment, and business tax reform, allow workers and firms to take 

better advantage of the opportunities trade offers. At the same time, policies like Trade 

Adjustment Assistance and the Affordable Care Act help protect workers from some of the 

challenges associated with globalization.

The rest of this report is structured as follows. In Section II, we highlight the main economic 

benefits of U.S. trade integration, starting with a review of the classic gains from trade, such as 

higher productivity, faster innovation, lower prices, and more varieties. Next, we survey research 

showing how trade supports jobs in larger, more productive, and higher-paying exporting firms 

and comment on the role of U.S. FTAs in the outsourcing of jobs. The section ends with a 

discussion of often overlooked development effects of expanding trade relations. Section III 

presents a brief analysis of sector-specific trends in U.S. trade, highlighting separately 

manufacturing, agriculture, and services. Section IV focuses on current trade negotiations with 

countries in the Asia-Pacific (Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP) and the European Union 

(Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, T-TIP), and section V concludes.
7

II. The Economic Effects of U.S. Trade Integration

The process of globalization offers many new economic opportunities, but it also has created 

challenges. Globalization is a result of both worldwide economic, social, and technological trends, 

as well as specific policy changes. Analyzing globalization’s general impact is different from 

analyzing any particular trade agreement. Understanding the impact of any particular agreement 

requires both historical context, as well as an analysis of the relative tariffs of trading partners, 

NTBs, and the relevant standards (for instance, on labor, environment, and intellectual property). 

Classic Gains from Trade

Nevertheless, historical experience does underscore the potentially large gains from trade. In the 

past half-century, as trade barriers around the world have diminished, these gains have 

multiplied and are increasingly shared across different countries and different industries. Among 

these classic gains from trade are enhanced productivity, increased innovative activity, and lower 

prices on and greater variety of goods and services for consumers and producers.

Enhanced Productivity

Defined as the amount of output that can be generated with a given level of inputs, total factor 

productivity (TFP) growth is historically associated with increasing real wages. Productivity 

growth is necessary for sustained faster income growth of U.S. workers and profoundly important 

for the living standards of middle-class Americans, in particular. Specifically, one of the major 

factors in disappointing middle-class income growth since the 1970s has been the slowdown in 

productivity growth that started around 1973. In fact, if productivity had continued growing at 

the same rate as it did between 1948 and 1973—that is to say, at 1.9 percent per year—and 

inequality followed its actual path, then Americans’ annual incomes in 2013 would have been 58 

percent higher, a fraction equivalent to roughly $30,000 per household.

There is a large body of economic research on the relationship between international trade and 

productivity growth, and its conclusions are generally positive for trade. For example, a recent 

review by De Loecker and Goldberg (2014) concludes that “there is one robust finding that 

emerges from this literature: globalization improves industry performance.” However, this 

literature has not reached a consensus on why trade improves productivity. Long-established 

theories of international trade suggest that trade liberalization will improve a nation’s economic 

productivity through several different channels.

Production Reallocation

First, trade can improve economy-wide productivity by allowing each country to focus on its 

comparative advantage. This benefit follows from the classic theory of trade gains first 

expounded by economist David Ricardo in 1817. Productivity gains can also occur within an 

industry if there is some heterogeneity between firms in that industry (Melitz 2003), as labor and 

resources shift in response to lower trade costs to the most efficient firms—those best able to 

take advantage of the opportunity to export. Several studies find evidence of this phenomenon 

in U.S. manufacturing. For example, one study compares high- and low-productivity plants during 

a time of falling tariffs and transportation costs and finds that industry productivity rises when 
8

trade costs fall (Bernard et al. 2006). Additionally, trade may improve the productivity of specific 

firms in an industry or even a single factory. If increased trade liberalization creates more demand 

from overseas for certain products, firms may be induced to reallocate resources toward core 

products. Bernard et al. (2011) find evidence to this effect. 

Increased Market Size

Beyond the productivity gains from reallocation, additional gains arise when firms’ export 

markets expand as the foreign trade barriers they face fall. If these firms can become more 

efficient as they grow (a phenomenon known as economies of scale), their productivity will rise. 

Lileeva and Trefler (2010) find evidence that Canadian firms that received preferential access to 

the huge U.S. market under the terms of the 1989 Canada-U.S. FTA improved labor productivity 

by investing in productivity-enhancing activities. Bustos (2011) finds similar evidence from 

Argentina, which entered into a trade agreement with Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay in 1991. 

Across these studies, the common mechanism is that exporting induces investments in 

technology. 

Learning-by-Exporting

Since the early 1990s, empirical research on trade has increasingly focused on firm-level data, 

and several recent studies have found evidence of a causal link from trade to increased 

productivity. Export activity offers firms opportunities to learn about foreign markets—perhaps 

even gaining technical expertise from foreign buyers—leading to increased productivity (De 

Loecker 2013). Productivity gains through exporting may also occur through increased 

competition from foreign producers. This “learning-by-exporting” theory has support in a 

literature spanning many countries and time periods. For example, De Loecker (2007) finds 

evidence of learning by exporting for Slovenia and Van Biesebroeck (2005) finds support in subSaharan Africa. A recent paper by Atkin, Khandelwal, and Osman (2014) experimentally 

manipulates access to trade so as to simulate a randomized trial, and finds strong evidence that 

Egyptian rug manufacturers (who randomly received an opportunity to export) became more 

productive as a consequence of foreign trading opportunities. 

While these findings may or may not generalize to more technologically advanced U.S. exporters, 

they provide important evidence of a causal link between trade and productivity, suggesting that 

the productivity improvements associated with trade do not necessarily only come through 

domestic resource reallocation. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Statistics 

in combination with data from the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) 

Manufacturing Industry Database (Becker, Gray, and Marvakov 2013) for the years 1989 to 2009, 

CEA’s analysis confirms findings in the literature on the productivity-enhancing effects of 

international trade. Table 1 reports coefficient estimates for two different specifications relating 

trade to the level of labor productivity, defined as value-added per employee. Across the 377 6-

digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industries, CEA documents the 

positive association of international trade and labor productivity.
9

Relying on cross-industry and over-time variation in trade, our estimation includes industry fixed 

effects to control for time-invariant differences across industries, which may affect productivity 

levels, as well as year fixed effects to account for common cyclical variation, including in inflation. 

The estimation also controls for industry size and the level of importing, where relevant. Though 

the estimate implies that tariff reductions are associated with decreases in labor productivity, 

this measured effect is insignificantly different from zero. The estimates in the second column, 

however, point to a statistically and economically significant relationship. Industries with larger 

increases in exports report larger increases in labor productivity. A 10 percent increase in an 

industry’s exports is associated with a 0.2 percent increase in the industry’s labor productivity. 

Over the two decades between 1989 and 2009, based on the average industry’s increase in 

exports, these estimates imply approximately an additional 8 percent labor productivity boost as 

compared to what would have happened with no change in international trade. Since average 

labor productivity in the United States increased by about 35 percent over these two decades, 

these estimates imply that international trade may have been responsible for about one quarter 

of total productivity growth over the 1990s and 2000s.

The literature also suggests that many productivity improvements associated with exporting are 

due to increased investments in technology. We provide some evidence for this hypothesis in 

Table 2, which documents that industries with larger increases in exports are also those industries 

with the largest increases in capital investment. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in exports is 

associated with about a 0.6 percent increase in investment. Therefore, the average industry 

invested about 22 percent more over the 1990s and 2000s, than would have been the case in a 

world with no change in exports.

Tariff 0.060

(0.047)

Log Exports 0.022*

(0.013)

Industry Fixed Effects YES YES

Year Fixed Effects YES YES

Control for Imports NO YES

Control for Industry Size YES YES

Observations 7,871 7,961

Log Labor Productivity

Table 1: Trade and Labor Productivity

Note: Labor productivity is defined as value added per employee. Tariffs are the simple average of applied rates. Industry size is 

defined as the inflation-adjusted value of total shipments by U.S. firms. Robust standard errors, clustered at the industry level, are in 

parentheses. *** denotes significance at the 1-percent level, ** denotes significance at the 5-percent level, and * denotes significance 

at the 10-percent level. The panel dataset comprises over 370 industries over the 1989-2009 period. Industries are defined according 

to NAICS and are disaggregated to the six-digit level.

Source: Data on value added, employment, total shipments, and industry-specific price indices are from the NBER M anufacturing 

Industry Database. Data on tariff rates are from the World Integrated Trade Solution database maintained by the United Nations 

Statistical Division. Data on imports and exports by industry from 1989-2006 are from the U.C. Davis Center for International Data. 

Data on imports and exports by industry from 2007-2009 are from the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census Bureau.
10

Table 3 takes the analysis one step further to ask whether trade liberalization via decreases in 

tariffs increases the rate of productivity growth. Industries that faced larger tariff declines over 

the 1990s and 2000s experienced larger increases in both labor productivity growth and TFP 

growth. A 10 percentage point decrease in tariffs corresponds to about a 0.4 percentage point 

increase in labor productivity growth and about a half percentage point increase in TFP growth 

over the two decades. In an era of relatively low productivity growth, these are large changes.

In summary, some studies conclude that trade leads to increased industry-wide productivity 

through a reallocation of market share towards more productive firms (Melitz 2003; Bernard and 

Log Investment

Log Exports 0.063*

(0.034)

Industry Fixed Effects YES

Year Fixed Effects YES

Control for Imports YES

Control for Industry Size YES

Observations 7,961

Table 2: Trade and Investment

Source: Data on investment, total shipments, and industry-specific price indices are 

from the NBER M anufacturing Industry Database. Data on imports and exports by 

industry from 1989-2006 are from the U.C. Davis Center for International Data. Data on 

imports and exports by industry from 2007-2009 are from the Foreign Trade Division of 

the U.S. Census Bureau.

Note: Investment is deflated using industry-specific price deflators. Industry size is 

defined as the inflation-adjusted value of total shipments by U.S. firms. Robust 

standard errors, clustered at the industry level, are in parentheses. *** denotes 

significance at the 1-percent level, ** denotes significance at the 5-percent level, and * 

denotes significance at the 10-percent level. The panel dataset comprises over 370 

industries over the 1989-2009 period. Industries are defined according to NAICS and are 

disaggregated to the six-digit level. 

Labor Productivity Growth TFP Growth

Tariff -0.041*** -0.048***

(0.007) (0.006)

Industry Fixed Effects YES YES

Year Fixed Effects YES YES

Control for Industry Size YES YES

Observations 7,867 7,867

Table 3: Trade and Productivity Growth

Note: Labor productivity is defined as value added per employee. TFP is defined as in Becker et al. (2013). Labor productivity growth 

and TFP growth are defined as the one-year growth rate. Tariffs are the simple average of applied rates. Industry size is defined as 

the inflation-adjusted value of total shipments by U.S. firms. Robust standard errors, clustered at the industry level, are in 

parentheses. *** denotes significance at the 1-percent level, ** denotes significance at the 5-percent level, and * denotes significance 

at the 10-percent level. The panel dataset comprises over 370 industries over the 1989-2009 period. Industries are defined according 

to NAICS and are disaggregated to the six-digit level. 

Source: Data on value added, employment, TFP growth, total shipments, and industry-specific price indices are from the NBER 

M anufacturing Industry Database. Data on tariff rates are from the World Integrated Trade Solution database maintained by the 

United Nations Statistical Division.
11

Jensen 1999; 2004a; 2004b). In other words, the selection of the most productive firms into 

international markets means that productivity may cause trade. Other studies argue that the 

causality goes in the opposite direction, with global trade driving increases in productivity (for 

example, Lileeva and Trefler 2010 and Bloom, Draca, and Van Reenen 2011). It is difficult to 

distinguish between these two mechanisms empirically, since both suggest a positive relationship 

between trade and productivity. And in practice, both stories could be correct: trade may cause 

productivity, at the same time as productivity causes trade. 

More Innovative Activity

Most people associate the term “innovation” with new tools and technologies that improve their 

daily lives. This makes sense; major innovations like the automobile or computer have a visible 

impact on living standards. Economists, on the other hand, tend to focus on aggregate 

innovation, as measured by TFP, as we touched on in the previous section. However, a growing 

body of work also considers the impact of trade on innovative activities, such as research and 

development (R&D) spending and patenting. Because there are several different mechanisms 

that could produce this effect, it is helpful to divide the relevant theoretical channels into two 

broad groups: (1) trade stimulates innovation directly, and (2) trade alters the incentives to 

innovate. 

Innovation Production Function

Both exporters and importers are frequently exposed to new ideas and novel tools, materials, or 

techniques that make them more productive. Some of the learning that results is simply copying. 

For example, many multinational companies have systems and standards to promote the 

diffusion of “best practices” within their global supply chains (MacDuffie and Helper 1997 and 

Distelhorst, Hainmueller, and Locke 2014). Learning also occurs when a firm adapts novel ideas 

to suit its own operating environment, leading to both new goods and greater productivity. For 

example, many American manufacturers and businesses in other industries have adopted aspects 

of the “lean” production system, which was originally developed in Japan, and realized 

substantial productivity benefits by tailoring the underlying ideas to meet their own needs (Teich 

and Faddoul 2013). 

Many of the new ideas that diffuse through trade are embodied in intermediate inputs. In fact, 

roughly half of all U.S. imports are inputs into the production of final goods. Increases in the 

quality and variety of these inputs can reduce domestic firms’ production costs, thereby inducing 

American importers to expand production and employment. For example, Romer (1994) shows 

that a country’s gains from international trade increase substantially when the benefits of 

cheaper and more varied imported production inputs are taken into account.

Trade can also increase innovative productivity by allowing innovators to specialize. Greater 

specialization can increase the amount of knowledge produced per unit of R&D investment if 

companies in different countries focus on innovating in the areas where they have a comparative 

advantage. For example, if engineers at one firm focus on improving memory chips, and 

engineers at another firm focus on improving microprocessors, the R&D productivity of each firm 

may be higher, leading to better and cheaper computers than if each company had to improve 
12

both components simultaneously. Branstetter, Fisman, and Foley (2006) show that strengthening 

foreign intellectual property protection leads to more outward licensing from the United States, 

where U.S. companies allow other companies to use their ideas, products, or processes in 

exchange for royalty payments. Specifically, the authors find that royalty payments from foreign 

affiliates to U.S. parent companies increase by 16.6 percent on average following a reform that 

strengthens intellectual property rights in the affiliates’ home country. This finding highlights the 

role of NTBs for shaping trade in ideas, particularly if one country specializes in the “R” and the 

other in the “D.”2

The Incentives to Innovate

International trade allows companies to access a larger market, which yields more profit for a 

given level of innovation, and therefore raises the incentive to innovate. For example, the global 

reach of the “App Stores” managed by Apple and Google contributes to the large number of 

software developers who populate those distribution platforms. Aw, Roberts, and Xu (2008) find 

that firms with experience in foreign markets have a greater probability of R&D investment, 

consistent with the idea that accessing larger foreign markets translates into higher expected 

returns to R&D.

Even holding market size constant, increased trade can promote innovation by strengthening 

competition. More than fifty years ago, Arrow (1962) pointed out that a monopolist may have 

relatively weak incentives to innovate because its innovations do not allow it to “steal” business 

from competitors. A similar idea appears in more recent “Schumpeterian” models of innovation 

and economic growth (Aghion et al. 2005), where competition can promote growth by increasing 

the expected payoffs of successful innovation. By bringing companies into a worldwide 

marketplace, trade greatly increases the incentive for a firm to innovate in order to win business 

from its competitors (Bloom, Draca, and van Reenen 2011), reinforcing the market-size effects 

discussed above. However, Schumpeterian models also suggest that too much competition can

reduce innovation, because firms will not wish to invest in R&D if their discoveries are easily 

copied and the resulting profits immediately dissipated.

Higher Living Standards

Perhaps the most broadly shared benefit of increased trade is lower prices for consumers and 

producers in the domestic market. By allowing our trading partners to produce the goods in 

which they are relatively more efficient, the United States can import at lower prices than would 

prevail if we were to use our scarce resources to produce the goods ourselves. This “specialize in 

what you do best, trade for the rest” philosophy makes everyday goods and services more 

affordable and enhances the real earning power of American workers’ and families’ current 

incomes. 

Fajgelbaum and Khandelwal (2014) note that lower-income consumers spend a larger share of 

their disposable income on heavily-traded food and clothing items, while higher-income 

consumers devote a relatively larger share to spending on services, which can be harder or 

 

2

For more analysis of trade in ideas, please see Box 7-1 in CEA (2015a).
13

impossible to trade. This implies that international trade is relatively more beneficial to middleclass consumers. Specifically, as is illustrated in Figure 1, the authors estimate that U.S. 

consumers at the 10th percentile of the income distribution would lose more than half of their 

purchasing power if the United States shut out all international trade, owing to higher prices. 

Median-income consumers would still lose more than a quarter of their purchasing power, as 

compared to only a 3 percent gain in purchasing power for Americans at the 90th percentile of 

the income distribution. Although these estimates are based on an extreme counterfactual, the 

numbers remind us of the potential for new trade agreements to reduce prices in the United 

States and raise consumers’ purchasing power, particularly for middle-class consumers.

Another underappreciated benefit of trade liberalization is increased variety for domestic 

consumers and producers. With new importers come new products. This expanded selection 

increases the welfare of consumers who appreciate having more choice. Broda and Weinstein 

(2006) examine historical trade statistics and determine that the variety of imported goods 

increased approximately three-fold between 1972 and 2001. Conventional import price indices 

have trouble incorporating the value of increased choice, so this finding suggests that import 

prices have effectively fallen even further than the conventional import price index would 

suggest. The researchers estimate that this increased variety has provided U.S. consumers with 

value equivalent to 2.6 percent of GDP, or approximately $450 billion in 2014. Mostashari (2010) 

updates the calculations in Broda and Weinstein (2006) and reports that the number of varieties 

of goods imported into the United States increased 33 percent between 1989 and 2007.

In addition, recent estimates suggest that over one-half of all U.S. imports are intermediate 

inputs into the production process. The greater variety of imports available at lower prices 

reduces firms’ production costs, thereby helping American businesses to expand production and 

employment and increase the wages they can afford to pay. Since World War II, reductions in 

U.S. tariffs are estimated to have contributed an additional 7.3 percent to U.S. GDP (Bradford, 

Grieco, and Hufbauer 2005). 

62

29

3

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

10th 50th 90th

Figure 1: Gains from Trade Across the Income Distribution

Percent of Purchasing Power Gained from Trade

Income Percentiles

Aggregate 

Gains

Source: Fajgelbaum and Khandelwal (2014).
14

Labor Market Implications of Trade and Trade Agreements

Trade also has notable impacts on labor markets, many of them a direct result of the classic gains 

from trade in terms of increased productivity and innovation. U.S. businesses that expand in 

response to the increased foreign market access due to U.S. trade agreements support additional

jobs. The importance of such export-led job growth for the Nation’s income is reinforced by the 

fact that wages in export-intensive manufacturing industries tend to be higher than wages in nonexport-intensive manufacturing industries. Of course, while the aggregate benefits of trade may 

be large, they may also be unevenly distributed.

3 Trade, therefore, can also have adverse effects 

for some workers. Domestic policies the Administration supports, such as investment in 

infrastructure, worker training, and education, can help our labor force take advantage of the 

considerable opportunities that trade opens up. For displaced workers and their families, 

effective policies can help smooth the adjustment into new, potentially higher-paying jobs.

Higher Wages

Expanding U.S. market access abroad has important implications for the workforce at home. A 

very long literature spanning decades and many different countries highlights that exporting 

firms are systematically different from non-exporting firms even within the same industrial 

category. Bernard and Jensen (1995) were the first to document this fact for the United States. 

They note that exporting plants are larger in terms of employment, more productive in terms of 

value added per worker, more strongly capital-intensive, and pay higher wages. These 

differences persist even within detailed industrial categories, and controlling for firms’ regional 

locations. 

Figure 2 offers descriptive evidence relying on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade 

Statistics matched to the NBER’s Manufacturing Industry Database. Export-intensive industries 

are defined as those industries with above-average values of exports as a fraction of total 

shipments (the export share) in 1989, and non-export-intensive industries are those industries 

with below-average values of the export share in 1989.4 For ease of illustration, in order to report 

the various characteristics in comparable units, the Figure reports the industry’s characteristic as 

a ratio to the average industry’s characteristic, calculated as described in the Figure note. On 

average over the 1989 to 2009 period of data availability, relative to non-export-intensive 

industries, export-intensive industries report 51 percent higher TFP growth, 17 percent higher 

average wages (total wage bill per worker), 10 percent higher levels of labor productivity (total 

shipments per worker), 17 percent higher value added per worker, and 31 percent higher capital 

intensity (total real capital stock per worker), consistent with the findings in the academic 

research.

 

3

For an examination of the relationship between trade and income inequality, refer to Chapter 7 of CEA (2015a). In 

addition, Harrison, McLaren, and McMillan (2011) provide a summary of the large literature on the links between 

globalization and inequality.

4 The average export share across the 377 6-digit NAICS industries was 12.7 percent in 1989.
15

Exporter Wage Premium

That exporters pay higher wages than similar non-exporters is a well-established feature of the 

data across many countries and over decades (see Table 1 in Schank, Schnabel, and Wagner 

2004). For the United States, estimates for the exporter wage premium (the amount by which 

exporting industries and firms pay higher wages than non-exporting industries and firms) are as 

high as 18 percent. Riker (2010) estimates that workers employed in U.S. export-intensive

manufacturing industries earned approximately 18 percent more than similar workers employed 

in domestically-oriented manufacturing industries between 2006 and 2008. In follow-up work, 

Riker and Thurner (2011) demonstrate that the relationship holds in services industries as well.5

Controlling for industry differences, Bernard, Jensen, Redding, and Schott (2007) document a 6-

percent exporter wage premium in 2002: the average annual wage at exporting manufacturing 

firms is 6 percent higher than the average annual wage at domestically-oriented manufacturing 

firms.

 

5

In an update on this line of research, Riker (2015) estimates that workers employed in export-intensive 

manufacturing industries earn a premium of 16.3 percent, and that workers employed in export-intensive services 

industries earn a premium of 15.5 percent based on 2014 data.

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

TFP Growth Average

Wages

Labor

Productivity

Value Added

Per Worker

Capital

Intensity

Export-Intensive Non-Export-Intensive

Figure 2: Characteristics of Export-Intensive and 

Non-Export-Intensive Industries, 1989-2009

Note: The ratio to the industry average is calculated as follows. Each industry’s 

characteristic is measured relative to the industry average within the year and then averaged 

over the 1989-2009 period and across export-intensive and non-export-intensive industry groups. 

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research-Center for Economic Studies, Manufacturing 

Industry Database; U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics; CEA Calculations.

Ratio to the Industry Average
16

Source

Time Period 

(sector)

Wage Variable 

(aggregation)

Export Variable 

(aggregation)

Estimated Exporter 

Wage Premium 

(in percent)

Control Variables

Bernard and Jensen (1995) 1976-1987 

(manufacturing)

Average annual 

wage (plant)

Exporter dummy 

(plant) 4.5

Capital per worker 

Hours per worker 

Plant size 

Plant age 

Multiplant dummy 

Industry Fixed Effects 

Region Fixed Effects

Year Fixed Effects

Bernard and Jensen (1995) 1976-1987 

(manufacturing)

Average annual 

wage (plant)

Exporter dummy 

(plant) 1.7

Capital per worker 

Hours per worker 

Plant size 

Firm Fixed Effects

Year Fixed Effects

Bernard and Jensen (1999) 1984 

(manufacturing)

Average annual 

wage (plant)

Exporter dummy 

(plant) 14.8

Plant size 

Industry Fixed Effects 

State Fixed Effects

Bernard and Jensen (1999) 1987 

(manufacturing)

Average annual 

wage (plant)

Exporter dummy 

(plant) 9.3

Plant size 

Industry Fixed Effects 

State Fixed Effects

Bernard and Jensen (1999) 1992 

(manufacturing)

Average annual 

wage (plant)

Exporter dummy 

(plant) 9.3

Plant size 

Industry Fixed Effects 

State Fixed Effects

Bernard, Jensen, Redding, and 

Schott (2007)

2002

(manufacturing)

Average annual 

wage (firm)

Exporter dummy 

(firm) 6.0

Firm size 

Industry Fixed Effects

Riker (2010) 2006-2008

(manufacturing)

Weekly earnings 

(individual)

Export share 

(industry) 18.0

Industry import share 

Individual education 

Individual age/age-squared 

Dummy for sales/office 

occupations 

Dummy for union participation 

Gender 

Race 

Dummy for lives in metro area 

Riker and Thurner (2011) 2006-2008

(services)

Weekly earnings 

(individual)

Export-intensive 

dummy (industry) 15.8

Dummy for individual age>=35

Dummy for college graduate

Dummy for white collar 

occupation

Gender

Race 

Year Fixed Effects 

Riker (2015) 2014

(manufacturing)

Weekly earnings 

(individual)

Export-intensive 

dummy (industry) 16.3

Dummy for individual age>=35

Dummy for college graduate

Dummy for graduate degree

Gender

Race 

State Fixed Effects

Riker (2015) 2014

(services)

Weekly earnings 

(individual)

Export-intensive 

dummy (industry) 15.5

Dummy for individual age>=35

Dummy for college graduate

Dummy for graduate degree

Gender

Race 

State Fixed Effects

Table 4: Summary of Export Wage Premium Literature

Note: The estimated exporter wage premia presented in this table are not directly comparable across rows, due to differences in the variables of interest, differences in control variables, and 

differences in the estimation methodology.
17

Table 4 summarizes the literature on the U.S. exporter wage premium, as adapted from Table 1 

in Schank, Schnabel, and Wagner (2004). Bernard and Jensen (1995) consider plant-level data on 

the manufacturing industry, and ask how a given plant’s export status (a binary indicator for 

whether the plant exports or not) relates to the plant’s average wage payments, controlling for 

industry, region, and year effects, as well as other plant-specific variables (capital per worker,

hours per worker, plant size, plant age, and whether the plant is part of a multi-plant firm). The 

interpretation of their estimated exporter wage premium is then that exporting plants pay higher 

average wages than observationally-equivalent non-exporting plants located in the same region 

and producing in the same industry and time-period. Riker (2010), by contrast, takes a different 

approach. The author matches individuals to the industries in which they work, and relates the 

individual’s earnings to her industry’s export share. His analysis controls for the worker’s location, 

as well as several worker-level characteristics that influence wages, such as education, age, union 

participation, gender, race, and binary variables for whether the worker is employed in a whitecollar profession and whether the worker lives in a metro area (both of which typically pay higher 

wages). The interpretation of his estimated exporter wage premium is then that workers 

employed in high export share industries report higher earnings than observationally-identical 

workers, living in the same state, who work for low export share industries. 

Therefore, it is important to note that the estimated wage differentials reported in Table 4 are 

not directly comparable across rows, due to differences in the main variables of interest, 

differences in control variables, and differences in the estimation methodologies, and should be 

viewed as complementary estimates. On the one hand, estimates like those from Bernard and 

Jensen (1995) inform us about average wages at exporting plants relative to non-exporting 

plants, and estimates like those in Riker (2010) inform us about an individual worker’s wages

depending on whether the worker is employed in an exporting industry or not. In what follows, 

CEA considers both cases.

Average Wages

Table 5 reports coefficients relating trade to average wages, following the same estimation 

strategy that we employed in our analysis of trade and productivity—that is, we relate industrylevel exports to the industry’s average wage over the 1990s and 2000s, akin to the work in 

Bernard and Jensen (1995) given data constraints. Controlling for time-invariant industry and 

year factors, as well as industry size and imports, the results are suggestive of wage gains

associated with exporting, including for production workers. Notably, a 10 percent increase in 

exports is correlated with a 0.1 percent increase in the industry average production wage, 

suggesting average wages for production workers were about 4 percent higher than they would 

have been in the absence of strong increases in U.S. export activity. This corresponds to about 

$1,380 in increased earnings (in 2009 dollars) for the average production worker in the average 

industry, or $1,520 in today’s dollars. 
18

Individual Wages

How can exporters and non-exporters offer persistently different wages in the same product 

categories? Several explanations for this feature of the data have surfaced in the literature. If 

labor markets are assumed to be competitive, it is likely that while average wages at exporters 

are higher, individual wages at exporters are not. Instead, it is likely that exporters hire a 

systematically different type of worker; that is, more skilled workers who would earn higher 

wages on average regardless of where they work—that is, at both exporters and non-exporters. 

Explanations for why exporters require a higher-skilled labor force include the technological 

requirements of exporting (Yeaple 2005; Bustos 2007, 2011) and that exporters produce higher 

quality goods (Verhoogen 2008). 

The point that wage differences between exporters and non-exporters persist even after 

controlling for the observable characteristics of workers suggests departures from perfect 

competition in the labor market. Amiti and Davis (2012) propose a fair-wages, rent-sharing 

story—that is, exporters earn higher profits than non-exporters, which are then shared with their 

workers. Alternatively, Davis and Harrigan (2011) and Frías, Kaplan, and Verhoogen (2009) 

suggest that exporters may pay efficiency wages—as higher quality products require higher 

quality workers, exporters pay efficiency wages to induce effort from workers. Finally, Davidson, 

Matusz, and Shevchenko (2008) and Helpman, Itskhoki, and Redding (2010) argue for search and 

matching frictions in the labor market. Due to complementarities between firm productivity and 

worker ability, the more productive exporting firms have an incentive to screen for workers 

above a given ability threshold. As higher ability workforces are harder to replace (i.e., the 

screening cost is higher), multilateral bargaining over wages leads to higher wages at exporting 

firms, even for very similar workers.

In order to account for some of the observable differences across workers who sort into exporting 

industries, in Table 6, we consider a simple analysis using data on individual-level annual earnings 

Log Average Wage Log Average Production Wage

Log Exports 0.007 0.010*

(0.004) (0.006)

Industry Fixed Effects YES YES

Year Fixed Effects YES YES

Control for Imports YES YES

Control for Industry Size YES YES

Observations 7,961 7,961

Table 5: Trade and Average Wages

Note: Average wages are defined as total payroll per employee. Average production wages are defined as total production payroll 

per production worker. Industry size is defined as the inflation-adjusted value of total shipments by U.S. firms. Robust standard 

errors, clustered at the industry level, are in parentheses. *** denotes significance at the 1-percent level, ** denotes significance at the 

5-percent level, and * denotes significance at the 10-percent level. The panel dataset comprises over 370 industries over the 1989-

2009 period. Industries are defined according to NAICS and are disaggregated to the six-digit level. 

Source: Data on payroll, production payroll, employment, production employment, total shipments, and industry-specific price 

indices are from the NBER M anufacturing Industry Database. Data on imports and exports by industry from 1989-2006 are from the 

U.C. Davis Center for International Data. Data on imports and exports by industry from 2007-2009 are from the Foreign Trade 

Division of the U.S. Census Bureau.
19

from the Current Population Survey (CPS) for the years 1989 to 2009. Closely following the work 

in Riker (2010), the data match individual workers to the industries in which they work. The 

regression then relates the level of exports in an industry to the individual’s earnings. Even when 

controlling for differences in worker characteristics such as gender, education, race, and age, 

differences in workers’ employment through industry fixed effects, and differences in workers 

locations through state fixed effects, CEA confirms an exporter wage premium. CEA’s analysis 

suggests that the strong increase in exports over the 1990s and 2000s translates into an 

additional $1,300 in annual earnings for workers in today’s dollars.6

Foster Access to Foreign Markets Without Outsourcing

A common criticism of U.S. FTAs is that U.S. firms will shift production and employment away 

from the United States to our trading partners, assumed to have lower labor standards and lower 

wages, in order to cut labor costs by effectively sending U.S. jobs abroad.

One motivation for FDI is to circumvent barriers to sales abroad—so to the degree that trade 

agreements eliminate these barriers they make it easier to produce in the United States and 

export abroad.

In addition, to the degree that trade agreements—directly or indirectly—raise labor standards 

they can reduce some of the incentives that lead to outsourcing. Relying on data across many 

countries over the 1980s and 1990s, Palley (2005) makes the case that higher labor standards are 

 

6 More importantly, our analyses in Table 5 and Table 6 find no statistical relationship between increases in imports 

and earnings. Any potential downside to workers’ wages due to import competition appears to be offset by the 

benefits of increased imports of intermediate inputs (Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg 2008).

Log Annual Earnings

Log Exports 0.012*

(0.007)

Industry Fixed Effects YES

State Fixed Effects YES

Year Fixed Effects YES

Control for Imports YES

Control for Industry Size YES

Observations 224,055

Table 6: Trade and Individual Wages

Source: Data on earnings by industry are from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current 

Population Survey, as downloaded from the IPUM S-CPS, University of M innesota. 

Data on imports and exports by industry from 1989-2006 are from the U.C. Davis Center 

for International Data. Data on imports and exports by industry from 2007-2009 are 

from the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. Data on total shipments by 

industry are from the NBER M anufacturing Industry Database. 

Note: Robust standard errors, clustered at the industry-year level, are in parentheses. *** 

denotes significance at the 1-percent level, ** denotes significance at the 5-percent 

level, and * denotes significance at the 10-percent level. The panel dataset comprises 75 

industries over the 1989-2009 period. Industries are defined according to the 1990 

Census Bureau industrial classification system.
20

associated with higher wages. Olney (2013) documents that foreign investment is responsive to 

labor market standards in other countries. Using data on FDI abroad by U.S. companies, the 

author finds that Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries 

with fewer employment protections received more U.S. FDI, offering some suggestive evidence 

of a wider globalization-inspired race-to-the-bottom on employment protections.

7 This logic is 

why current and future U.S. trade agreements directly embed strong and enforceable labor 

commitments into their main texts (see Section IV for more information on current trade 

negotiations). Moreover, the results in Palley (2005) and Olney (2013) together suggest that by 

increasing enforceable labor standards, and thus increasing wages, abroad though our trade 

agreements, the United States can potentially curb the outsourcing of American jobs.

Figure 3 summarizes the evolution of the stock of U.S. FDI in our free trade partners before and 

after the enactment of all 14 FTAs (across 20 countries).8 For a baseline comparison, the analysis 

also presents the evolution of the stock of U.S. FDI in non-FTA partners before and after our FTAs 

entered into force. By construction, time zero is the date of entry into force of the agreement.

Our analysis of the relationship between U.S. trade agreements and outsourcing documents that 

the stock of U.S. FDI in our FTA partners shows no notable increase after enactment of the 

agreement relative to the increase in U.S. FDI in our non-FTA partners post-enactment. 

Specifically, looking at GDP-weighted averages of the stock of investment over time, Figure 3

shows that, on average, U.S. FDI in our FTA partners grew by 6.3 percent per year in the five years

 

7 The employment protections measure used in the paper is only available for OECD countries, and thus many lessdeveloped countries are not included in the sample. However, that the paper finds an economically significant 

relationship among OECD countries suggests that the relationship identified may be even stronger among a wider 

set of countries.

8 The analysis that follows uses data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on direct investment positions 

valued on a historical cost basis. According to Ibarra-Caton and Mataloni (2014), the historical-cost value largely 

reflects prices at the time of the investment.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5

Years from FTA Enforcement

Stock of Real FDI as Percent of FDI at FTA Enforcement 

GDP-Weighted Average 

across All Countries

Except FTA Partners

GDP-Weighted Average

across FTA Partners

Figure 3: Stock of Real U.S. FDI Abroad

Around U.S. Free Trade Agreements

Note: All values in real 2009 dollars, deflated using the U.S. GDP deflator.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Direct Investment Position; International Monetary Fund, 

World Economic Outlook; CEA Calculations.
21

pre-FTA enforcement, close to the growth rate of U.S. FDI in our non-FTA partners in the five 

years leading up to FTA enforcement (8.1 percent per year). There was essentially no trajectory 

change in the annualized growth rate of U.S. FDI in our FTA partners in the five years following 

FTA enactment (at 8.4 percent).

Given that one motivation for FDI abroad is to circumvent foreign trade barriers in order to serve 

the foreign market, this is perhaps not surprising. In fact, some FDI may have been replaced by 

U.S. exports to those markets post-FTA enforcement (as is suggested in Figure 7-5 of CEA 

(2015a)), offsetting other potential increases in U.S. FDI associated with the liberalization of rules 

on overseas investment in the new FTA. Therefore, the evidence in Figure 3 suggests that U.S. 

firms do not increase net outsourcing when the United States enters FTAs. Although some 

production could shift offshore to take advantage of new FTA rules, other production that would 

have shifted offshore could end up staying in the United States, thanks to our improved access 

to foreign markets.

Figure 4 reports the stock of U.S. FDI in China’s free trade partners. In this case, the data show 

unambiguously that when China enters into FTAs, U.S. firms send more foreign investment 

abroad (outsource more) to China’s free trade partners. Likely, U.S. companies take advantage 

of the preferential access to the Chinese market—a key spoke in the global supply chain—

without any countervailing incentives to increase production in the United States(due to reduced 

trade barriers abroad). Specifically, while the stock of U.S. FDI to China’s FTA partners and nonFTA partners grew by around 9-10 percent per year before China’s FTAs entered into force, real 

growth of U.S. FDI in Chinese FTA partners increased to 20 percent per year after China’s 

agreements entered into force, without any comparable change in the growth rate of U.S. FDI in 

China’s non-FTA partners.

The trends documented in the previous two charts are further supported by data on other 

measures of multinational activity around U.S. and Chinese FTAs.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5

Years from FTA Enforcement

Stock of Real FDI as Percent of FDI at FTA Enforcement

GDP-Weighted Average 

across All Countries

Except FTA Partners

GDP-Weighted Average

across FTA Partners

Figure 4: Stock of Real U.S. FDI Abroad

Around Chinese Free Trade Agreements

Note: All values in real 2009 dollars, deflated using the U.S. GDP deflator.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Direct Investment Position; International Monetary Fund, 

World Economic Outlook; World Bank, World Development Indicators; CEA Calculations.
22

There are many potential explanations for the descriptive evidence presented in the figures 

above—for example, there are differences in the types of countries that the U.S. engages with in 

FTAs as compared with the types of countries with which China engages. Nevertheless, the trends 

in the data are broadly consistent with the idea that U.S. FTAs do not actually encourage 

outsourcing abroad. Instead, what may increase the outsourcing of American jobs is to remain in 

the status quo; that is, without the United States to set high-quality labor standards around the 

world, other countries enter into FTAs of their own and become magnets for outsourcing from 

the United States. Further research on the relationship between trade agreements, FDI, and jobs 

can help to elucidate these effects.

9

Development Effects of Trade

The United States engages in international trade and trade agreements to increase market-access 

opportunities for U.S. businesses and workers and to lower prices and increase options for U.S. 

consumers. In addition to these benefits, it is important to recognize the positive impact trade 

has on global growth and security. The United States benefits directly when the rest of the world 

is more prosperous and secure—providing a bigger and more stable market for American 

exports. U.S. trade policy also has implications for labor rights in our trading partners, gender 

equality, and environmental sustainability. 

Increased Economic Growth

When countries specialize in the goods and services they can produce relatively efficiently and 

trade for the rest, world production and consumption increase as existing global resources are 

more effectively utilized. Simple international trade theory, therefore, suggests that increased 

international trade can boost incomes. However straightforward this may seem, it is actually 

quite difficult to discern empirically a causal relationship between trade and income. For 

instance, countries may trade more because they are richer. Richer countries have better trading 

infrastructure, such as good ports, and better access to information about opportunities abroad. 

The fundamental challenge for statistical inference, then, is that while trade may affect income, 

income also affects trade.

An extensive body of work examines the empirical association between trade openness and per 

capita income growth. Frankel and Romer (1999) were among the first to attempt to establish a 

causal picture of the impact of trade on income, arguing that the geographic placement of 

countries provides a way to isolate a component of trade that is unrelated to income except 

through its effect on trade. The authors use the distance between countries to predict the 

amount of their bilateral trade, relying on the well-established relationship that proximity is a 

strong predictor of trade flows (the so-called “gravity model”). Because a component of trade 

flows isolated in this manner is highly correlated with income, the authors conclude that trade 

has a positive causal effect on income.

 

9 Please see CEA (2015b) for further discussion of the relationship between FTAs and outsourcing.
23

Recent work argues that this approach should be refined to reflect that the distance between 

countries may be related to non-trade determinants of income. For example, as documented by 

Acemoglu et al. (2001), current economic development may depend directly on early economic 

differences that have persisted over time, for example, differences related to geography and 

climate. Changes in economic distance can help to isolate the impact of transportation costs on 

income as these operate through the trade channel. Feyrer (2009a) relies on a unique event in 

recent world history to identify changes in distance between country-pairs—the closure and reopening of the Suez Canal between 1967 and 1975. For some countries, this increase in sea 

distance was substantial, and trade between such country-pairs dropped by 20 percent. Since 

some country-pairs were not affected by the closing, it offers a unique experiment to test how 

trade impacts income. The author concludes that every dollar of increased trade raises income 

by about 25 cents. 

Relying on another unique measure of time-varying distance between countries to predict 

international trade, Feyrer (2009b) documents again the importance of international trade for 

incomes. In this second paper, the author recognizes that the rapid progress in aircraft 

technology in recent years dramatically changed the effective distances between countries—

goods that previously had to circumvent large land masses by ship, can now travel by air via the 

great circle distance. These changes, therefore, differentially benefited pairs of countries linked 

by relatively short air routes as compared with sea routes. Using country-specific, time-varying 

measures of sea distance and air distance, the author concludes that trade has a significant 

positive effect on income, such that a 1 percent increase in trade raises real income by 0.5 

percent.

Trade’s potential to raise real income growth in U.S. trading partners holds substantial potential 

benefits for us. Growth in our trading partners increases the demand for U.S. exported goods. 

Figure 5 illustrates the strong correlation between growth in U.S. exports and growth in the rest 

of the world.

-20

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

-4 -2 0 2 4 6

Figure 5: U.S. Export Growth vs. Foreign GDP Growth, 

2000-2014

Real U.S. Export Growth, Percent Year-Over-Year

Trade-Weighted Foreign GDP Growth, Percent Year-Over-Year

Note: Data displayed are quarterly year-over-year growth rates.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts; National Sources 

via Haver Analytics.
24

Poverty

The world has made historic progress in reducing poverty in recent decades. The total number of 

poor people around the world fell by nearly half a billion between 2005 and 2010, and the 

numbers are estimated to fall further in coming years at rates never before seen in history

(Chandy and Gertz 2011). Largely due to growth in China and India, across-country global income 

inequality recently witnessed the first decline since the Industrial Revolution (Milanovic 2013). A 

range of research shows that trade has played a role in these developments.

Hanson (2007) investigates the case of Mexico in the decade surrounding the implementation of 

the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. 

Using state-level variation, the author documents that individuals born in states with highexposure to globalization have relatively higher wages than individuals born in states with lowexposure to globalization. McCaig (2011) uses the 2001 U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement 

(BTA) to study the effects of increased market access to rich countries on poverty in developing 

countries and finds that a one standard deviation decrease in provincial tariffs is associated with 

a two-year rate of poverty reduction of between 33 and 40 percent. By contrast, work by 

Topalova (2007, 2010) on India’s 1991 trade liberalization provides a different view. Although the 

incidence of poverty in rural India fell 13 percentage points around the liberalization—from 37 

percent in 1987 to 24 percent in 1999—areas of that country more exposed to trade experienced 

progress toward poverty reduction that was not as rapid as other areas.

Better Working Conditions

A common argument against trade integration with countries in the developing world is the poor 

labor standards of those countries. However, research finds that expanding access to U.S. 

markets promotes higher-quality employment in less-developed countries as workers shift from 

informal to formal employment, with little empirical evidence that local tariff reductions have an 

offsetting effect—meaning that the forces unleashed by trade itself complement the effort to 

include enforceable labor standards in our FTAs. 

A recent paper by McCaig and Pavcnik (2014) finds that employment shifts from the household 

business (informal) sector to the formal enterprise sector in Vietnam in the aftermath of large 

U.S. tariff reductions as part of the U.S.-Vietnam BTA. Similarly, Paz (2014) reports that decreases 

in foreign market tariffs decrease domestic informal employment in Brazil, while early work by 

Goldberg and Pavcnik (2003), supported in Menezes-Filho and Muendler (2011), finds no 

evidence of a link between declining import tariffs in Brazil and informal employment. More 

importantly, work by Edmonds and Pavcnik (2005) documents a decrease in child labor 

associated with increased international trade in Vietnam.

This is important because jobs in the informal sector are associated with lower wages, lower 

employee benefits, worse working conditions, and lower job quality. McCaig and Pavcnik (2014) 

report that workers in household businesses earn about 14 percent less than observationally 

equivalent workers in the formal sector (in the same industry, province, and occupation). 

Workers that switch to formal work (controlling for unobserved worker characteristics) earn 

about 5 percent more than when they worked in a household business. Relying on information 
25

from the Colombian National Household Survey, Goldberg and Pavcnik (2003) offer evidence that 

informal sector work is associated with lower job and workplace satisfaction, very few benefits, 

lower incidence of job training, and higher uncertainty about duration of employment. Formal 

workers are more likely to receive individual benefits such as health coverage, dental coverage, 

vacations, incentive bonuses, maternity leave, unemployment benefits and pensions, sick leave, 

transportation benefits, insurance, and family subsidies. In fact, 83 percent of informal workers 

report receiving no benefits through their job—this number is only 4 percent for formal workers. 

Therefore, trade agreements that expand U.S. market access for countries at a lower level of 

development can provide a market-based approach to improving labor conditions in the 

developing world.10 High standard U.S. trade agreements also contain commitments to promote 

and enforce workers’ rights. In fact, Dewan and Ronconi (2014) analyze whether FTAs signed 

between the United States and Latin American countries during the last decade produced higher 

enforcement of labor regulations. Their estimates suggest that signing an FTA with the United 

States increased both inspection resources (the number of inspectors) and inspection activities 

(the number of inspections). 

In addition, recent studies by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) of the U.S. 

Department of Labor (DOL) assess the advancement of U.S. preferential trading partners in 

combating the worst forms of child labor (ILAB 2012, 2013, 2014), as required by the Trade and 

Development Act of 2000. Table 7 presents simple statistics based on data in these reports.11

Across all three years, U.S. FTA partners were more likely than non-FTA partners to be assessed 

by DOL as having “significantly advanced” in combating child labor. In particular, in 2013, 36 

percent of U.S. FTA partners “significantly advanced,” while only 7 percent of non-FTA partners 

“significantly advanced.” In fact, five of the 13 countries that DOL assessed as having “significantly 

advanced” are U.S. FTA partners. Meanwhile, while approximately 11 percent of non-FTA 

partners were assessed in 2013 as having made “no advancement,” no U.S. FTA partners were in 

this category. Over all three years of data availability, U.S. FTA partners were less likely to make 

“no advancement”. 

 

10 Salem and Rozental (2012) provide a review of the literature on labor standards and trade.

11 Admittedly, these data provide only suggestive correlative evidence, and cannot be used by themselves to infer a 

causal relationship. 
26

In addition to the assessments in each year, Table 7 also documents that as a group FTA partners 

were more likely to earn improved assessments over time. Notably, between 2011 and 2013, the 

likelihood that an FTA partner “significantly advanced” increased by 27 percentage points, as 

compared to only a 6 percentage point increase for non-FTA partners. Moreover, in the three 

years of data, no FTA partner was ever assessed to have regressed in combating child labor. By 

contrast, between 2011 and 2012, 9 percent of non-FTA partners regressed, and between 2012 

and 2013, 16 percent of non-FTA partners saw downgraded assessments. 

Finally, though most U.S. FTAs entered into force long before DOL began reporting on countries’ 

advancement in combating the worst forms of child labor, two countries (Colombia and Panama) 

entered into free trading arrangements with the United States over the period of assessment. 

Interesting, although with no necessary implication of a causal relationship, is the fact that 

Colombia’s assessment improved to “significantly advanced” in 2012, the year it entered into an 

FTA with the United States, from “minimal advancement” the year before. Similarly, Panama 

achieved “moderate advancement” in 2012, the year it entered into an FTA with the United 

States, as compared to “minimal advancement” the year before. 

Stronger Environmental Protection

Trade agreements can raise environmental standards in countries that otherwise would not be 

motivated to raise standards on their own. In fact, the United States has a long history of pursuing 

mutually supportive trade and environmental policies, and has found that strong, enforceable 

environmental provisions pursued as part of our bilateral and regional trade agreements can help 

raise environmental standards in our trading partners, leveling the playing field for workers and 

businesses in America. 

In addition to this values-driven approach to trade policy, there are two broad channels through 

which trade can impact the environment: by changing the level of economic activity within 

trading countries (known as the “scale effect”), and by changing the composition of economic 

activity among trading countries (known as the “composition effect”). In each channel, there are 

ways in which trade can help encourage sustainable development and promote environmental 

protection. 

FTA 

Partners

non-FTA 

Partners

FTA 

Partners

non-FTA 

Partners

FTA 

Partners

non-FTA 

Partners

Percent of Countries identified as:

No Advancement 8.3 17.5 7.1 10.3 0.0 10.7

Minimal Advancement 33.3 44.4 14.3 37.6 21.4 28.1

Moderate Advancement 50.0 37.3 57.1 46.2 42.9 54.5

Significant Advancement 8.3 0.8 21.4 6.0 35.7 6.6

Observations 12 126 14 117 14 121

Table 7: U.S. Free Trade Agreements and Child Labor

2011 2012 2013

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor , 2011-2013.
27

Scale Effect

It is well-established that increases in trade activity among countries go hand in hand with 

increases in their overall economic activity. Environmentalists often point to this increase as a 

cause for worry. A greater scale of economic activity likely means increases in transportation, 

shipping, production, and consumption—all pollution-emitting activities. Note, however, that 

much of this concern would apply to any policy that increases productivity growth, including 

expanded research and education.

Higher productivity is associated with higher real incomes. Greater prosperity, in turn, can benefit 

the environment in multiple ways. Higher real incomes create opportunities for investment in 

R&D in clean technology, allowing countries to “clean-up” production techniques. Higher real 

incomes can also generate greater ability and willingness to adopt, enforce, and pay for higher 

standards of environmental quality. For example, with more disposable income, families might 

be willing to pay a little extra to buy a hybrid car, or install solar panels for home-electricity 

generation. 

Ultimately, increased economic activity both generates and curbs pollution; the overall effect on 

the environment depends on the relative magnitudes of each change. Empirical studies have 

produced relatively consistent results showing that trade does increase pollution, but also that 

accompanying emissions reductions from cleaner technology are enough to offset that increase. 

For instance, Antweiler, Copeland, and Taylor (2001) remark that if trade liberalization raises GDP 

per capita by 1 percent, then pollution concentrations fall by about 1 percent. The authors 

decompose this effect as follows: a 1 percent increase in the scale of economic activity raises 

pollution by around 0.5 percent, but the increase in income associated with international trade 

drives down pollution by around 1.5 percent. Similarly, Copeland and Taylor (2003) estimate the 

technique elasticity of pollution reduction with respect to income to be negative and greater than 

1 in absolute value; that is, a given increase in real income is associated with an even greater 

reduction in pollution in percentage terms. Grether, Mathys, and de Melo (2010) analyze data on 

62 countries and 7 manufacturing sectors and show that increases in worldwide trade flows 

between 1990 and 2000 are associated with a 2 to 3 percent decrease in global sulfur dioxide 

emissions. Further, they show that manufacturing industries have become much cleaner over 

time—while, globally, manufacturing’s employment and output levels rose 10 to 20 percent 

between 1990 and 2000, manufacturing emissions decreased by 10 percent. In other words, the 

evidence suggests that, likely due to a global shift toward cleaner technology, the net effect of 

increased trade on pollution is less than or equal to zero.

Figure 6 provides a basic visual illustration to support the findings of the existing academic 

literature. Looking at the relationship between the growth in world exports, world greenhouse 

gas emissions, and world output, it is clear that on a global scale, emissions have increased along 

with increases in trade and output, but at a much slower rate. Between 2002 and 2008, in 

particular, though exports surged, emissions did not. 
28

Looking at the data another way, Figure 7 shows that emissions per dollar exported have actually 

decreased over time, illustrating the global shift toward cleaner production technologies.

Composition Effect

Compositional changes that occur in the economies of trading partners as trade promotes 

production specialization are a second mechanism behind trade’s environmental impacts. A 

popular assumption is that specialization will send the most heavily polluting industries from rich 

countries with stricter environmental regulation to poor countries, which have relatively lax 

regulation. Theoretically, this migration would lead to an increase in world pollution levels and 

the creation of “pollution havens” in developing countries that, as exporters of the “dirtiest” 

goods, would bear a disproportionate amount of global pollution burdens. In a worst-case 

scenario, environmentalists say, a race-to-the-bottom in environmental regulation could ensue 

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Exports

GDP

Emissions 

Index, 1990=100

Note: Exports and GDP measured in real 2009 dollars, deflated using U.S. GDP deflator. 

Emissions measured in metric tons of CO2 equivalent. 

Source: World Resources Institute, CAIT; World Bank, World Development Indicators.

Figure 6: Global Exports, GDP, and 

Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 1990-2011

2011

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Figure 7: Global Emissions per 

Billion Dollars of Exports, 1990-2011

MtCO2e per Billion Dollars

Note: Exports in real 2009 dollars, deflated using U.S. GDP deflator. Emissions measured in 

metric tons of CO2 equivalent. 

Source: World Resources Institute, CAIT; World Bank, World Development Indicators.

2011
29

if developed countries were to see an incentive to slow down efforts to raise environmental 

protection in an effort to forestall the “dirty” industries’ emigration. True, not all parties in a 

trade relationship can specialize in the cleanest industries, but concerns about “pollution havens” 

and races-to-the-bottom are belied by the empirical evidence. In fact, there is reason to believe 

that compositional changes could actually yield net environmental benefits. 

Developed countries tend to be the best equipped for production of high-polluting goods since 

the most-polluting industries, which include the manufacture of chemicals, metals, and paper, 

and oil refining, are capital intensive. The basic economic theory of comparative advantage 

suggests that those industries belong in countries with abundant capital—the richer, developed 

countries. Poorer countries with less capital on hand are more likely to specialize in industries 

that are more service-oriented and labor-intensive, and less polluting. If this is true, the 

compositional effects of trade could actually lead to reductions in global emissions, as pollutionintensive production would occur in countries with stricter standards. 

Of course, the issue is slightly more complicated, as environmental regulation can increase the 

marginal cost of production in polluting industries, driving them to less regulated countries. 

According to a 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) report, however, the increased marginal 

cost of pollution abatement in developed countries is no more than 1 percent of production costs 

for the average polluter (a maximum of 5 percent for the worst polluters). Such small costs are 

likely not powerful enough to deter production and send it elsewhere and, according to the WTO, 

the developed-country share of global production in polluting industries has remained relatively 

constant at around 75 to 80 percent over the past few decades (Nordstrom and Vaughan 1999). 

Regardless of environmental regulation, standard non-environmental comparative advantage 

considerations seem to dominate location decisions.

Broader Inclusion and Participation

Trade promotes competition, which helps reduce discrimination and furthers social inclusion. 

Research has documented a decrease in discrimination-based wage gaps based on gender, race, 

and immigration status in the aftermath of increased trade. Research also confirms that greater 

openness to trade, as measured by lower tariff rates, is correlated with better human-rights 

conditions.12

Gender and Racial Equality

Promoting equality is a key development goal in both the developing world and in the United 

States. Importantly, since trade promotes international competition, it may also reduce firms’ 

leeway to discriminate against women and other traditionally disadvantaged groups. The classic 

Becker (1957) model of discrimination predicts that costly discrimination cannot persist with 

increased market competition. Therefore, as trade liberalization results in increased competition 

in the domestic market, discrimination-based wage gaps should narrow. 

 

12 Research also supports the idea that increased economic cooperation through trade improves political 

cooperation, reducing worldwide violent conflict. See Chapter 7 of CEA (2015a) for further discussion.
30

In line with the theory, by investigating trade-affected manufacturing industries in the United 

States between 1976 and 1993, Black and Brainerd (2004) find that the residual gender wage gap 

narrowed more rapidly in initially more concentrated industries that experienced larger increases 

in competition with trade reform than in initially more competitive industries. Klein, Moser, and 

Urban (2010) confirm this result for the case of Germany, demonstrating that increasing exports 

diminished the manufacturing gender wage gap in that country. 

If trade promotes competition and reduces discrimination, we should see decreases in other nonproductive wage gaps. In fact, Essaji, Sweeney, and Kotsopoulos (2010) found that trade 

exposure helped narrow the racial wage gap in the United States by about 1.4 percentage points 

between 1983 and 1993 and Klein, Moser, and Urban (2010) document a similar decrease in the 

wage discount suffered by immigrants in Germany.

Akin to our analysis of the exporter wage premium, CEA collected data from the CPS on annual 

earnings of women and men in 3-digit NAICS industries in order to assess the impact of increased 

international competition on the gender wage gap. For each industry, we calculate the gender 

earnings ratio as the average wage across all women employed in the industry relative to the 

average wage across all men employed in the industry. In the beverage and tobacco 

manufacturing industry, female earnings are particularly low, reported to be only 18.7 percent 

of average male earnings. Meanwhile, in textile product mills, average female wages are almost 

3.5 times average male earnings. These industry-level gender wage gaps are then matched to 

industry-level tariff rates for the years 1989-2009. 

Table 8 reports coefficient estimates for a panel estimation with industry and year fixed effects 

relating tariffs to the gender wage ratio, with the idea that decreasing tariffs increases foreign 

competition in the industry, thereby reducing the gender wage gap. CEA’s estimates show that 

industries with larger tariff declines over the 1990s and 2000s experienced larger relative income 

gains for women. A 10 percentage point decrease in tariffs is associated with approximately a 1 

percentage point increase in female annual earnings relative to male annual earnings. As we 

remark earlier, average tariffs in the United States are already very low, and therefore, changes 

in U.S. tariffs over this time period were also quite small. It is no surprise, then, that the 

improvement in the gender wage gap that can be attributed to tariff changes is also very small.

While not large, it is another way that expanded trade integration produces benefits for middleclass families. Moreover, the precision of our estimates is suggestive of the potentially larger 

impact of trade on middle-class families and gender income inequality, once the full range of 

competition-enhancing policy changes, beyond tariff changes, associated with new trade 

agreements come into effect.
31

Democracy and Human Rights

Opponents of trade agreements with less-developed countries often point to human rights 

abuses in those countries as reasons not to engage economically. Though assessing a causal 

relationship between trade openness and democratic institutions, political liberties, or civil 

liberties is difficult, the idea that globalization can promote the spread of democratic ideas goes 

as far back as Kant (1795). The international exchange of goods and services allows for the 

exchange of ideas and methods, promoting political competition. Alongside the natural force of 

globalization, many current regional trade agreements also include provisions related to human 

rights, such as privacy rights, political participation, due process, access to information, cultural 

rights, indigenous rights, and access to affordable medicines (Aaronson and Chauffour 2011). 

Does international trade foster democracy and human rights? Rigorous empirical research in 

economics suggests the answer is yes.

López-Córdova and Meissner (2005) is among the best studies trying to estimate a link from trade 

openness to democracy. Following the long literature estimating the link between trade and 

income (discussed earlier), the authors employ a gravity model specification to obtain 

instruments for international trade openness, using information dating back to 1870. Their work 

reports a positive impact of trade openness on democratization. Democratization is proxied by 

the composite index score from the Polity IV data set, which summarizes a country’s political 

system based on competitiveness in executive recruitment, constraints on the executive, and 

competitiveness in political participation. The authors note that “[b]etween 1920 and 1938 

countries more exposed to international trade were less likely to become authoritarian.” 

Eichengreen and Leblang (2006) also rely on the gravity model for their instrumental variables 

analysis, which seeks to disentangle the two-way causality between democracy and trade. Like 

López-Córdova and Meissner (2005), they find that trade openness promotes democracy. In the 

Eichengreen and Leblang (2006) paper, a country is coded as democratic if it has elections where 

Gender Earnings Ratio

Tariff -0.0741***

(0.0193)

Industry Fixed Effects YES

Year Fixed Effects YES

Control for Industry Size YES

Observations 420

Table 8: Trade and the Gender Wage Gap

Note: Tariffs are the simple average of applied rates. Robust standard errors, clustered 

at the industry level, are in parentheses. *** denotes significance at the 1-percent level, ** 

denotes significance at the 5-percent level, and * denotes significance at the 10-percent 

level. The panel dataset comprises 21 industries over the 1990-2009 period. Industries 

are defined according to NAICS and are disaggregated to the three-digit level.

Source: Data on earnings by gender and industry are from the U.S. Census Bureau, 

Current Population Survey, as downloaded from the IPUM S-CPS, University of 

M innesota. Data on total shipments by industry are from the NBER M anufacturing 

Industry Database. Data on tariff rates are from the World Integrated Trade Solution 

database maintained by the United Nations Statistical Division.
32

more than one party competes. As this definition means that Croatia is as “democratic” as the 

United Kingdom, the authors also employ a continuous democracy variable that captures the 

length of time a country has been a democracy. Across both measures, trade is a strong predictor 

of democratic institutions.

Beyond democratic political institutions, Sykes (2003) provides a compelling argument for human 

rights as a “normal good”—that is, the growth in income that international trade provides will 

promote human rights. Relying on data for 195 countries on average tariff rates and four 

measures of the quality of human rights (the Humana Rating, from the 1991 Human Rights Guide; 

the Economic Freedom Rating for 2000, prepared by the Wall Street Journal; the Freedom House 

Political Rights Rating; and the Freedom House Civil Liberties Rating), Sykes (2003) confirms that 

greater openness to trade, as measured by lower tariff rates, is correlated with better humanrights conditions. 
33

III. Sector-Specific Trends in U.S. Trade

As policy barriers in the U.S. and around the world come down, the United States is increasingly 

more integrated with the rest of the world.13 Exports and imports as a percentage of GDP have 

roughly tripled in the decades since 1970. Still, in 2014 the United States remains a relatively 

closed economy, as exports and imports represent only 13 percent and 16 percent of GDP, 

respectively.14

Part of this reflects still high NTBs to international trade and investment in the rest of the world, 

particularly for trade in services—a growing component of U.S. and international trade. Consider, 

for example, the changing composition of U.S. exports from 1980 to the present, as depicted in 

Figures 8a and 8b. Manufactured goods comprise the bulk of U.S. exports, consistently 

representing around 60 percent of total U.S. goods and services exports. By contrast, 

agriculture’s share of total exports declined from 15 percent in 1980 to only 6 percent in 2014, 

while the share of services among total U.S. goods and services exports increased from 18 

percent in 1980 to 30 percent in 2014. The share of other goods has also fallen over time, from 

8 percent in 1980 to 4 percent in 2014.

The relatively strong growth of U.S. services exports since 1980, as compared to merchandise 

exports (both manufactured and agricultural goods), is depicted in Figure 9. In real terms, U.S. 

services exports have grown 6-times over, this growth picking up speed in 2000 with the digital 

revolution. Real manufactured goods exports have almost quadrupled since 1980, while real 

agricultural exports have grown by about 50 percent in the last three-and-a-half decades.

 

13 Please see Chapter 7 of CEA (2015a) for further background on U.S. and world trade.

14 By comparison, in 2014, respectively, Germany’s exports and imports represent 46 percent and 39 percent of its 

GDP, and China’s exports and imports represent 25 percent and 22 percent of its GDP, respectively.

Manufactured 

Goods

60%

Services

30%

Agricultural 

Goods

6%

Other Goods

4%

Figure 8b: Composition of U.S. Exports, 2014

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis, International 

Services; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States; 

CEA Calculations. 

Manufactured 

Goods

59%

Services

18%

Agricultural 

Goods

15%

Other Goods

8%

Figure 8a: Composition of U.S. Exports, 1980

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis, International 

Services; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States; 

CEA Calculations. 
34

These sector-specific trends in U.S. exports are in part a reflection of broader changes in the U.S. 

economy. Figure 10 depicts sector-specific shares of total U.S. GDP and total civilian employment 

since 1947. 

Services industries comprise about four-fifths of the U.S. economy, and employ over 80 percent 

of American workers. More importantly, the shares of services in U.S. GDP and U.S. employment 

have been steadily rising since the middle of the last century, growing over 20 percentage points 

and almost 35 percentage points, respectively, since data collection began. 

Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector currently makes up about 12 percent of the U.S. economy, 

and employs roughly 8 percent of American workers. In sharp contrast to services, the shares of 

manufacturing in U.S. GDP and U.S. employment have been steadily declining since the middle 

Manufactured

Goods

Agricultural Goods

Services

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Figure 9: U.S. Exports of Goods and Services, 1980-2014

Index, 1980=100

Note: All values in real 2009 dollars, deflated using the U.S. GDP deflator.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis, International 

Services; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States.

2014

0

1

2

3

4

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

1947 1954 1961 1968 1975 1982 1989 1996 2003 2010

Figure 10: Share of Employment and GDP in the Services, 

Manufacturing, and Agricultural Sectors, 1947-2014 

Percent

Services GDP 

(left axis)

Services Employment 

(left axis)

Agriculture 

Employment

(right axis)

Agriculture GDP 

(right axis)

Manufacturing Employment

(left axis)

Manufacturing GDP

(left axis)

Percent

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts; Bureau of Labor 

Statistics, Household Survey and Payroll Survey.
35

of the last century. In fact, manufacturing’s share of the U.S. economy has more than halved since 

its peak at around 28 percent of GDP in the early 1950s, when manufacturing employed roughly 

one in every four American workers. Agriculture’s decline has been no less significant, though on 

a much smaller scale, with agriculture’s share of the economy falling from 2 percent of GDP in 

1977 to just over 1 percent of GDP in 2014, and agriculture’s share of employment falling from 

around 3 percent since data collection began to around 1 percent today.

Part of the reason for these employment share trends is the comparatively rapid growth of labor 

productivity in manufacturing and agriculture, as compared to services (see Figure 11). This high 

productivity growth allows manufacturing prices to fall compared to the prices of services, 

thereby reducing the overall weight of manufacturing value-added in national value-added. 

Moreover, as people get richer, they increase spending on items like housing, as well as services 

like health care, travel, and restaurants, more than they increase their spending on manufactured 

goods such as cars or televisions. Therefore, services employment must increase to keep up with 

this growing demand. These trends are apparent in all industrial countries.

In what follows, we consider the role of international trade in each of these three major 

components of the U.S. economy.

The Rise of Services Trade

Despite the prevalence of services in the economy, there is a dearth of research investigating the 

impact of international trade in services. The cross-border flow of physical goods is easy to 

measure as goods pass through customs authorities. Services trade, on the other hand, is less 

straightforward to document, as many services are delivered digitally and thus have no single 

Manufacturing

Agriculture

Services

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

1947 1954 1961 1968 1975 1982 1989 1996 2003 2010

Thousands

Figure 11: Labor Productivity in Services, Manufacturing, and 

Agricultural Sectors, 1947-2014

Thousands of Dollars per Worker 

Note: All values in real 2009 USD, deflated using the U.S. GDP deflator.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts; Bureau of Labor 

Statistics, Househould Survey and Payroll Survey.
36

point of crossing.15 The General Agreement on Trade in Services, a WTO agreement that came 

into force in 1995, defines four modes of services trade:

 First, services trade occurs when a service produced in one country is consumed in 

another country; for instance, when Hollywood movies show in theaters abroad. 

 Second, services trade occurs when consumers from abroad purchase local services, such 

as when foreigners travel to the United States for vacation, for an education, or for health 

care services. 

 The third mode of services trade occurs through FDI; for instance, when a U.S. bank opens 

a branch abroad to offer financial services in other countries. 

 The fourth mode of services trade occurs when individual service providers from one 

country travel to supply services in another country. An example would be an American 

academic receiving a fee to present an educational seminar abroad.

Apart from limited data, the lack of research on services trade also reflects that services, which 

require interaction between producers and customers, were long thought to be non-tradable—

the classic example of the non-tradable service being the haircut. While haircuts are still unlikely 

to be traded, the rapid rise in Internet access and capacity to move data around the world at low 

cost has created entirely new export opportunities for services providers and American small 

businesses. This growth in information technology and declining transportation costs have 

facilitated a strong rise in trade in services like education, health care, tourism, as well as the 

many business and professional services associated with trade in goods (telecommunications, 

finance, distribution, insurance, and more). The spread of multinational firms and the worldwide 

subdivision of production processes have also contributed to this rise. 

In 2014, U.S. services exports measured approximately $710 billion, or 30 percent of total U.S. 

exports, while imports of services were about $480 billion, or 17 percent of total U.S. imports. 

Together, services trade accounted for almost 7 percent of U.S. GDP in 2014. As depicted in Figure 

12, these levels reflect rapid growth since 1980; real U.S. services exports grew by 613 percent 

over the 34-year period to 2014, or at a 5.6-percent average annual rate. The United States 

maintains a strong and growing surplus in services.

 

15 The Economics and Statistics Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that in 2011 over 60 

percent of U.S. services exports and about 17 percent of total U.S. goods and services exports are delivered digitally 

(Nicholson and Noonen 2014).
37

The BEA characterizes nine broad categories of tradable services: insurance; government; 

financial; travel; maintenance and repair; telecom, computer, and information; transport; 

intellectual property; and other business services. Figure 13 illustrates the composition of the 

growth in real U.S. services exports since 1999. Though all categories have been growing in the 

last decade and a half, contributing to the overall rise in U.S. services exports, real exports of 

insurance services have been growing at the fastest pace, quadrupling between 1999 and 2014. 

Real exports of financial services also increased, since detailed data collection began in 1999, by 

over 200 percent—from $24 billion to $82 billion in 2014, expressed in 2009 dollars.

Like tariffs on goods trade, the United States already maintains a relatively open services trade 

regime. The OECD calculates a Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), to function as a tariffequivalent for services trade. The United States has relatively low services barriers to trade, 

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

1980 1990 2000 2010

Billions of Dollars

Exports

Imports

Balance

Note: All values in real 2009 dollars, deflated using the U.S. GDP deflator. Data post-1998 

are based on BEA's restructured U.S. Trade in Services series.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, International Economic Accounts; Haver Analytics.

Figure 12: U.S. Trade in Services, 1980-2014

2014

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 2014

Travel Intellectual Property

Other Business Services Transport

Financial Services Telecom, Computer, & Information

Government Maintenance and Repair

Insurance Services

Figure 13: Composition of Services Exports Growth, 1999-2014

Billions of Dollars

Note: All values in real 2009 dollars, deflated using the GDP deflator.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, International Economic Accounts.
38

according to the OECD (see Figure 14). In fact, as compared to the sector average across the 40 

countries analyzed by the OECD (34 OECD members, plus Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, 

and South Africa), the United States has lower barriers to services trade in 14 out of 18 different 

service sectors. Liberalizing services trade through U.S. agreements around the world will unlock 

new opportunities for American workers and businesses. In fact, Jensen (2011) reports that 

services are still five times less likely to be exported than manufacturing products. If services 

reached the same export potential as manufactured goods, U.S. exports could increase by as 

much as $800 billion. 

Manufacturing Rebound

In October 2014, President Obama issued a proclamation declaring a National Manufacturing 

Day. At that time, the U.S. labor market had witnessed 56 months of consecutive job growth and 

the unemployment rate stood at 5.8 percent, the lowest rate since before the Great Recession. 

Since then, the positive trend has continued, with manufacturers creating 866,000 new jobs since 

the sector’s turning point in 2010. 

Today, the United States is increasingly competitive for manufacturing jobs, investment, and 

exports. For the last three years, the United States has been ranked #1 in AT Kearney’s FDI 

Confidence Index, and, in 2013, the United States surged past countries like China, Brazil, and 

India, for the first time since 2002, to become the most attractive country for investment globally

(A.T. Kearney 2015). At the same time, U.S. exports of manufactured goods have increased by 

over 40 percent, from $918 billion in 2009 to $1.3 trillion (measured in 2009 dollars) in 2014—

far outpacing growth in total U.S. goods and services exports. This growth has reduced the U.S. 

manufactured goods trade deficit by almost 20 percent since its peak in 2006.

However, despite the increasing competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing for investment and 

exports, among critics of international trade and trade agreements a central concern is that 

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7 Lack of

Regulatory

transparency

Barriers to

competition

Other

discriminatory

measures

Restrictions to

movement of

people

Restrictions on

foreign entry

Figure 14: U.S. Services Trade Restrictiveness Index 

by Sector and Policy Area, 2014

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Average

Index
39

expanded trade might put the recent strength in U.S. manufacturing employment at risk.16 But,

as Figure 15 illustrates, the past periods of major decline in manufacturing employment largely 

coincide with economic recessions, not with new trade agreements. Conversely, manufacturing 

growth has been an important part of the most recent economic recovery, and it has been fueled

by strong growth in manufacturing exports. 

Manufacturing’s rebound since the Great Recession can also be seen in Figure 16. Starting in 

2009, manufacturing output has increased as a share of U.S. value-added, in marked contrast to 

the pattern seen in all other recent U.S. recessions.

 

16 For a discussion of the manufacturing employment effects of trade with China, please see Box 7-2 in CEA (2015a).

-250

-200

-150

-100

-50

0

50

100

150

-250

-200

-150

-100

-50

0

50

100

150

1 37 73 109 145 181 217 253 289 325 361 397 433 469

3 month moving average, thousands, seasonally adjusted

Note: Gray shading denotes recession.

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Payroll Survey; CEA Calculations

Figure 15: Monthly Change in Manufacturing Employment, 

1975-2015

Mar-2015

1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015
40

The rapid growth of U.S. manufacturing exports has helped support this dramatic rebound in the 

U.S. manufacturing sector coming out of the Great Recession. Sustaining this rapid growth in U.S. 

manufacturing exports is why it is so important to bring down foreign barriers to U.S. exports: 

increasing world demand for American-made manufactures is an integral component of growth 

in U.S. manufacturing jobs and manufacturing wages.

Robust Agricultural Trade

International trade has always been important to U.S. farm and rural economies, from early 

colonial days when tobacco and cotton were the most important export commodities, to today’s 

exports of large amounts of grain, oilseeds, and processed foods. As documented in Figure 17, 

exports of agricultural goods have displayed robust growth since 1990, with the value of those 

exports more than doubling in real terms.

Though today agriculture accounts for a relatively small share of U.S. GDP, U.S. agricultural trade 

accounts for 6 percent of all U.S. trade. In fact, agricultural exports have outpaced agricultural 

imports in recent years, generating a surplus in agricultural trade (see Figure 17). This agricultural 

trade surplus (at $43 billion in 2014) helps to offset some of the nonagricultural trade deficit. 

Moreover, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates that each dollar of agricultural 

exports stimulated another $1.22 in related business activity (ERS 2013). Therefore, in 2014 when 

the United States exported $155 billion in agricultural goods, based on ERS calculations, total 

economic output increased by almost $350 billion.

Since 1995, U.S. exports have expanded across a number of bulk and high-value product 

categories, highlighting the importance of international trade for U.S. agriculture. In 2014, 

oilseeds and pulses, horticulture products, and grains and feeds represented the largest export 

categories for U.S. agriculture (see Figure 18).

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Figure 17: U.S. Agricultural Trade, 1980-2014

Billions of Dollars

Note: All values in real 2009 dollars, deflated using the U.S. GDP deflator.

Source: U.S. Department of Agrigulture, Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States.

Exports

Balance
41

Foreign buyers account for a substantial share of the current production volume for many U.S. 

commodities (see Figure 19). For example, in 2014 approximately one-half of the wheat, rice, and 

soybeans produced in the United States were exported. Even more impressive, over two-thirds 

of U.S. almond and walnut production was exported and about 80 percent of cotton and 

pistachios.

In addition, trade opens up access to markets that put significantly higher value on products that 

have little demand in the United States, offering U.S. producers a new overseas market revenue 

source and further supporting farm and processor profitability. For example, according to the 

Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) at USDA, in the meat sector, parts of a carcass have little or 

no value to U.S. consumers, but are highly prized in some foreign markets. Chicken feet (or paws) 

provide a case in point. There is little demand for chicken paws in the United States, so their 

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Oilseeds,

Pulses

Horticulture

Products

Grains,

Feeds

Livestock,

Poultry,

Dairy

Other Food,

Consumer

Oriented

Other

Figure 18: Top U.S. Agricultural Exports, 2014

Billions of Dollars

Note: Oilseeds include soybeans and soybean meal and oil. Horticulture products include fresh 

and processed vegetables and whole and processed nuts. Grains and feeds include wheat, rice, 

corn, feeds and fodders, and other coarse grains. Other includes cotton, tobacco, and other bulk 

commodities. 

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. 

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Cotton Pistachios Walnuts Almonds Wheat Rice Soybeans

Figure 19: Select U.S. Agricultural Exports 

Percent as a Share of Production, 2014

Note: Data are for marketing year 2013/14.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service.
42

domestic price is correspondingly low—only 10 to 12 cents per pound. Since the opening of 

China’s market, however, the majority of chicken paws have been shipped to China and other 

overseas markets, where they can be sold for over 51 cents a pound—in the price range of some 

chicken leg quarters sold in the United States (OCE 2014). Beef trade offers similar examples, 

with beef livers, beef tongue, and beef tripe earning premium prices in Egypt, Japan, and China, 

respectively.

Finally, U.S. consumers benefit from the increased variety provided by imports (see Figure 20), 

particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. About half of all U.S. agricultural imports are fruit, 

vegetable, nut, and other horticultural products, which are now available year round thanks to 

trade.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Horticulture

 Products

Other Food,

Consumer

Oriented

Sugar, Oils,

 Tropical

Products

Livestock,

Dairy,

Poultry

Other Grains,

Feeds

Figure 20: Top U.S. Agricultural Imports, 2014

Billions of Dollars

Note: Horticulture products include fresh and processed vegetables and whole and processed 

nuts. Grains and feeds include rice, feeds and fodders, and other course grains. Sugar, oils, and 

tropical products includes sweeteners and products, coffee, cocoa and chocolate, vegetable 

oils, and rubber. Other includes tobacco and planting seeds. 

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. 
43

IV. Current Trade Negotiations

Despite the strong increases in U.S. trade over the last decades,

17 the potential gains from trade 

for the United States are far from exhausted. Therefore, the United States has been focusing in 

recent years on negotiations toward two major multi-continental FTAs: TPP would encompass 12 

Pacific nations across the Asia-Pacific, and T-TIP is a proposed FTA between the United States and 

the 28 member states of the European Union. The Administration’s trade agenda seeks to put 

the United States at the center of an integrated trade zone covering nearly two-thirds of the 

global economy and almost 65 percent of U.S. goods trade (see the map below). That will help 

make America the world’s production platform of choice, increasing U.S. exports and attracting 

more employers that want to invest in the United States, hire American workers, and sell 

American goods and services to the world.

A key goal of U.S. FTAs is to secure tariff reductions abroad. The United States is already a very 

open country. With almost 70 percent of imports crossing our borders duty-free, the tradeweighted average applied tariff in the United States is a low 1.4 percent. By contrast, many of 

our trading partners maintain relatively high tariffs. According to the World Bank, Vietnam’s 

simple average applied tariff rate was 7.1 percent in 2010, 4.2 percentage points above the 

equivalent U.S. tariff, and at 6.8 percent in 2009, Malaysia’s average tariff is also well above the 

same rate in the United States. The spreads for specific industries can be much greater—for 

instance, U.S. businesses face tariffs of up to 30 percent on auto exports to Malaysia and over 

700 percent on rice exports to Japan. Even among existing FTA partners, U.S. exporters to Canada 

still face over-quota tariffs as high as 313 percent on dairy products and as high as 249 percent 

on poultry products.

At the same time, tariffs are just one of many roadblocks to trade that governments put up. Trade 

agreements bring about reductions in NTBs, while also liberalizing investment regimes and 

services trade where NTBs are especially severe. Considering Figure 22, we note that the average 

 

17 For more information on current U.S. trade and trade agreements, please refer to CEA (2015a).
44

STRI across TPP countries that belong to the OECD is higher than the STRI in the United States in 

nine out of 18 service sectors. This average across TPP partners hides the much larger variation 

in services barriers that the United States faces in serving TPP markets. For instance, the 

maximum services trade barrier that the United States currently faces in prospective TPP trading 

partners is higher than the U.S. STRI in 16 out of 18 service sectors. Note that the OECD reports

information on only six out of the 11 other TPP countries, suggesting that these differentials could 

be even larger in the remaining five.

As a result, the main impact of new FTAs will be to reduce foreign barriers to U.S. exports, rather 

than further opening U.S. markets to imports. Bringing down our trade partners’ tariffs and NTBs 

is essential for American firms to be able to compete on a level playing field in the global 

economy. 

The Administration’s policy is to encourage trade agreements to promote a values-driven trade 

regime that maximizes globalization’s benefits while addressing globalization’s problematic sideeffects. Enforceable environmental and labor commitments, included as a core part of our 

agreements, can help to level the playing field for U.S. businesses and workers, while also 

contributing to strong labor protections and greener policies worldwide. In addition, our trade 

agreements ensure that American businesses remain competitive in a global market in which our 

trading partners are also gaining preferential access to foreign markets through negotiations of 

their own bilateral and regional agreements. The Administration’s efforts will also pave the way 

for future high-standard agreements around the world, and trade pacts with TPP and T-TIP

countries will help advance U.S. strategic and geopolitical interests. Finally, it is important to 

understand that these agreements are not meant to represent the end of the process. TPP is 

explicitly designed to allow others to join in the future, and both TPP and T-TIP are intended to 

spur further multilateral trade liberalization.

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

US OECD-Member TPP Average OECD-Member TPP Maximum

Figure 21: Services Trade Restrictiveness Index in the 

United States and non-U.S. OECD-Member TPP countries, 2014

Note: Data for non-U.S. TPP include OECD members Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, and 

New Zealand only.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, STRI.

Index
45

Trans-Pacific Partnership

TPP is a proposed regional FTA that the United States is negotiating with 11 other countries: 

Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, 

Singapore, and Vietnam. Based on the most recent data, TPP partners account for 37 percent of 

world GDP, 11 percent of the world’s population, and 23 percent of world exports of goods and 

services. In 2013, TPP countries received $698 billion in U.S. merchandise exports and $199 billion 

in U.S. services exports, making the region as a whole the top export destination for the United 

States. In addition, included among the partners are some of the fastest-growing economies in 

the world; according to some measures, the number of middle-class consumers in Asia is 

expected to grow to 3.2 billion by 2030 (Kharas and Gertz 2010), roughly ten times the projected 

size of the North American middle class—an enormous increase in the potential export market 

for U.S. goods and services. The region is already an important location for U.S. investment; in 

2013, U.S. companies invested $695 billion in the Asia-Pacific area. Petri, Plummer, and Zhai 

(2012, 2013) estimate that TPP would increase world income over $220 billion (about 0.2

percent) and increase world exports by over $300 billion, or 1.1 percent, in 2025. For the United 

States, the authors estimate TPP will increase GDP by over $75 billion, or approximately 0.4 

percent, and U.S. exports by 4.4 percent, around $124 billion, by 2025.

TPP countries have expressed their intent to achieve a “comprehensive and high-standard” FTA 

that will broadly liberalize regional trade and investment, strengthening economic ties between 

the parties. In addition to addressing tariff barriers, TPP countries are seeking to address a range 

of outstanding NTBs, such as import licensing restrictions, as well as to open services and 

government procurement markets in the region. The United States and its partners are seeking 

to negotiate rules that will provide transparent protections for investors and citizens, support the 

digital economy by encouraging Internet access and cross-border data flows, address paperwork 

and customs issues that hamper small-business exporters, promote innovation through strong 

enforcement of intellectual property rights, and offer guidance on competitive practices 

associated with state-owned enterprises.

In addition, when concluded, TPP will place strong workers’ rights commitments at the core of 

the agreement, making them enforceable and subject to dispute settlement, as with other 

commercial provisions. TPP will constitute the largest expansion of enforceable labor rights in 

history, more than quadrupling the number of people around the world covered by enforceable 

workplace standards. TPP will also contain strong commitments on the environment, including 

commitments to protect our oceans, combat wildlife trafficking, and eliminate illegal logging. As 

with the labor provisions of TPP, these commitments will be enforceable through dispute 

settlement, allowing for trade sanctions against countries that fail to abide by the commitments.

TPP will also include a robust intellectual property rights framework to promote innovation, while 

supporting access to innovative and generic medicines; secure market access for U.S. service 

suppliers; include provisions that ensure that private sector workers and businesses are able to 

compete on fair terms with state-owned enterprises; and contain obligations that will promote 

a thriving digital economy, including rules on open Internet access. 
46

Failing to secure a TPP agreement would place U.S. workers and businesses at a distinct 

disadvantage, by allowing other countries to set the rules of the global trading system—rules that 

would likely harm U.S. interests. Comprehensive trade agreements like TPP offer the United 

States a way to shape globalization’s rules in the best interest of American workers and firms and 

to ensure that global standards cover critically important areas like worker and environmental 

protections. 

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

The United States and the European Union already maintain the world’s largest bilateral trade 

relationship. In 2013, together both regions account for nearly one-half of world GDP and about 

42 percent of global exports of goods and services. Bilateral trade between the two regions 

amounts to about $1 trillion annually. Based on the most recent data, U.S. companies have 

approximately $2.4 trillion invested in the European Union, while European companies have $1.7 

trillion invested in the United States. These already strong economic relationships would be 

strengthened through the formalization of T-TIP.

Despite their large size and close ties, the European Union and the United States have not 

achieved the full potential of their economic relationship. Therefore, negotiations toward the 

ambitious T-TIP began in earnest in June 2013. Since tariff barriers between the two partners are 

already relatively low, the agreement strives to increase market access by also addressing the 

main NTBs. Importantly, both sides seek agreement on cross-cutting disciplines on regulatory 

coherence and transparency—including early consultation on major regulations and use of 

regulatory impact assessment—for the development and implementation of efficient, costeffective, and more-compatible regulations for goods and services. Adoption and use of good 

regulatory practices will ultimately raise the standards and promote trade beyond just the United 

States and the European Union. In addition, the governments intend to commit to liberalize

services trade, promote FDI, and cooperate on the development of rules and policies on global 

issues of common concern. 
47

V. Conclusion

Through trade linkages, the world’s economies are more interdependent than at any time in 

history. This interdependence has been supported not only by steep declines in the costs of 

international communication and shipping, but also by a reduction in governmental barriers to 

the cross-border movement of goods, services, and investment. Increasingly, economies are 

linked by production processes that cross international borders so as to minimize costs by better 

exploiting local comparative advantages.

The post-World War II process of globalization has delivered important benefits for U.S. 

consumers, workers, and businesses by increasing economies’ productivity, opening new 

markets for exports, and expanding the range of products available for purchase. Expanded trade 

has also improved peoples’ lives in other, indirect ways, for example, raising living and working 

standards in other countries, and locking in meaningful environmental protections.

Domestic U.S. policies that support the middle class are essential to help our economy take 

advantage of the opportunities afforded by trade along, as are measures to counteract 

potentially negative side effects. But beyond these purely domestic safeguards, an evolving 

structure of multilateral and regional agreements has worked to lower international trade 

barriers while reining in unfair trade practices. The WTO is central to that effort. In addition, the 

Administration is pursing comprehensive, high-quality trade agreements that provide U.S. 

exporters with enhanced market access while insisting that our trading partners do not compete 

on the basis of low labor or environmental standards. 
48

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