Todd N. Tucker’s Testimony before the Roundtable for the US International Trade Commission

Below is an excerpt from Todd N. Tucker’s testimony at the March 1, 2022, roundtable for the US International Trade Commission—”Distributional Consequences of US Trade and Trade Policy.”

I applaud the ITC for undertaking this crucial work on investigating the distributional effects of trade and trade policy, including today its impact on different racial and ethnic groups. 

I have a number of recommendations or observations as you conduct your two-part investigation to catalog existing information and develop new research and analysis capabilities. For brevity, these recommendations consist mostly of pointing to several bodies of scholarly literature worth considering as you conduct your review.

1. I would recommend the ITC take a broad view of distributional impacts, including by class.
2. I would urge ITC to consider the impact of trade policy on the observed incidence of manufacturing jobs, unionized jobs, and manufacturing unionized jobs for workers generally and Americans of color specifically.
3. I would urge you to examine the interconnections between trade, manufacturing, unions, and social cohesion (including interracial cohesion) more broadly.
4. Finally, as the ITC considers how itself and other trade policy agencies can advance racial equity, it should take a broad scope of what constitutes “trade policy.”