Economist and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers expressed support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement Thursday. Summers said the United States economy would benefit more from expanded exports than it would be hurt by import competition.
“The great mistake that runs through most of the debate about TPP … is that they confuse the economics of trade with the economics of trade agreements,” Summers said at the Atlantic’s Summit on the Economy. “The argument people make is that we should be against trade agreements. And what that misses is the profound asymmetry in the trade agreements we have negotiated. … The reality is that there is vastly more market-opening going on in the other countries than there is in the United States. Whatever it is you don’t like about import competition, we’re getting very little more of it. And whatever you do like in terms of job creation through more open markets for exports, we are getting substantially more of it.”
