Some 53 percent of Americans now say they don’t much like free trade, compared with 32 percent a decade ago. In part that is due to unhappiness with the jobs situation. Today’s jobs report might have cheered specialists who dig beneath the headline numbers: 64,000 private sector jobs were created in September. But non-experts focus on the headline number: a net loss of 95,000 jobs as state and local governments laid off workers, and the construction and manufacturing sectors did the same. The unemployment rate remains stuck at 9.6 percent. Almost 15 million Americans are actively and, with over six million out of work for 27 weeks or more, desperately looking for work. Throw in workers too discouraged to continue looking for work, and those involuntarily working short hours, and the total soars to almost 26.4 million, or 17.1 percent of the work force.

But there’s more to rising protectionist fervor. Yes, we believe that China is manipulating its currency, which it is; that the manipulation keeps the value of the yuan artificially low, which it does; and that the undervalued yuan to some unknowable extent is contributing to a flood of imports and joblessness in America, which it is. We also know that China has no intention of changing its policy. Responding to pressure from the U.S. Congress and from the EU, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said the regime will not bend, because if the yuan rises, low-margin Chinese exporters would go out of business, causing “social and economic turbulence … [that] would be a disaster for the world.” More likely, as he preferred not to add, a disaster for a regime that, lacking democratic legitimacy, can survive only by delivering a better material life for the still-poor Chinese masses. So America’s appeal for support to the International Monetary Fund at this weekend’s meeting of finance ministers can only be met with, “We’d like to help if we could…”