Free-trade worriers have nothing better to offer

Dartmouth professor Douglas Irwin argues that critics of free trade have nothig to offer as a productive alternative and most refuse to tackle the real issue with "concrete suggestions about how to make the economy stronger." Instead of fearing and trying fruitlessly to block competition, we should be figuring out ways to better compete. Here's an excerpt:

Many of the free-trade critics raise legitimate and important issues about wages and job creation in the United States. One would think the debate would focus on strengthening the economy or empowering workers in a difficult labor market. Workers can be empowered by allowing them to have portable retirement accounts rather than pensions tied to a particular employer. The portability of health-care benefits should be examined, as well as the design and incentive structure of current unemployment insurance programs. The tax-related costs that fall on companies that hire U.S. workers should be reassessed.

Unfortunately, many of the free trade critics seem more intent on bashing the idea of free trade than on coming up with constructive solutions to the problems they identify. Rather than do some hard thinking about labor-market policies, the critics try to put forth reasons why free trade doesn't work in today's world because this or that condition does or does not hold anymore. (Though technology has made services now much more tradable than in the past, this does not compromise the case for free trade, as is sometimes suggested.)