Policy Options. Both Democratic and Republican presidents over the past half-century have supported expanded world trade. The U.S. market is the largest in the world and the most open to foreign-made goods. Our policy has been to maintain an open American market while encouraging other nations to do the same. Indeed, the United States has led international efforts to liberalize world trade and investment and to eliminate foreign marker barriers to American exports. The efforts include support for the WTO multinational trade agreement; NAFTA, the Canada, Mexico, and U.S. agreement; and a number of bilateral agreement with Japan and other Asian trading partners.
The elite response to declining real wages and worsening inequality is to stress the need for American workers to improve their productivity through better education and increased training. The "solution" found in the Economic Report of the President reads as follows:
Ultimately, the only lasting solution to the increase in wage inequality that results from
increased trade is the same as that for wage inequality arising from any other source: better education and increased training, to allow low-income workers take advantage of the
technological changes that raise productivity.3