Robert Kuttner Quotes

The increased global linkages promote economic growth in the world through two key mechanisms: the division of labor and the international spillovers of knowledge.

Offshoring is only the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about at least since Adam Smith… More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that’s a good thing.

We should be growing and make ourselves, as a state and a nation, more competitive. India, China and these other countries are not waiting for us.

Increased fragmentation of production across international borders - a natural outgrowth of the gains from specialization - meant more trade for any given value of final production, thus adding to the major expansion in gross trade flows in the 1990s and 2000s.

The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.

Nothing we do in this great capital can change the fact that factories or information can flash across the world, that people can move money around in the blink of an eye... Nothing can change the fact that technology can be adopted, once created, by people all across the world and then rapidly adapted in new and different ways by people who have a little different take on the way that technology works.

China is a great manufacturing center, but it's actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial - more advanced industrial centers - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe - and it basically assembles them.

We are in a global economy whether we like it or not. And we believe - I believe - that America should be at the table writing the rules of the global economy instead of China.

When it comes to international trade, the question is, who is going to write the rules, the United States or China? And my vote is the United States.

NAFTA is an ancient treaty.

Although I don't like the way the Chinese do business, I continue to do business in China. I have to. They're the next world power.

Globalization is simply opening the free marketplace to encompass the entire world.

In a perfect world, people don't have to move to another country to get a higher wage. Ultimately, they need only be able to participate in producing output that is sold internationally.

As we work to promote greater economic opportunity for the American people, we must always remember that the American economy is deeply integrated with the global economy. That brings challenges but even greater opportunities.

People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs.

SXSW has been a melting pot of ideas and policy on immigration, cybersecurity, privacy, Internet of Things, international trade, and innovation.

When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.

Predictably, open markets made it possible for countries to drive rapid growth by hitching their wagon to the world economy and using global demand to pull people and resources out of subsistence activities into more productive work.

Exporting firms are more productive and pay higher wages than their domestically focused counterparts, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. If firms manage to thrive in world markets, they tend to increase their productivity even more.

The U.S. tends to export high-tech goods because we have strong comparative advantage there, and we tend to import labor-intensive and less skill-intensive goods that other countries can do more cheaply.

We are in favor of free trade.

The biggest losers from international trade are always those whose skills have a cheaper competitor in a different market.

Commercialism in the Western world has got us by the scruff of the neck. It's a technological takeover, and we can't even see it happening because we're too busy enjoying it.

It is quite plausible that the process of increased fragmentation of production across borders is subject to 'diminishing returns' and has its natural limits.

If Mexican farm labor is so much cheaper, maybe we should be growing our fruits and vegetables in Mexico. There's absolutely no reason to import Mexicans to do something they could do at home and then sell to us. I believe this is what economists call "competitive advantage".