Jerome Powell Quotes

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.

A lot of the economy is indeed being supplied by goods that are produced offshore. And much of the reason for that is societal.

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.

Digitally enabled supply chains initially increased efficiency and dramatically shortened lead times. Capital was mobile; labor, less so. Economic activity (production, research, design, etc.) moved to any accessible country or region that had relatively inexpensive labor and human capital.

Shipping is so cheap that it makes more financial sense for Scottish cod to be sent 10,000 miles to China to be filleted, then sent back to Scottish shops and restaurants, than to pay Scottish filleters.

America has global trade with plenty of nations that provide inexpensive labor, but it's better for us when they're in our own hemisphere, rather than sending that business halfway around the world.

During the boom years of the 1990s, globalization emerged as the most significant development in our national life. With NAFTA and the Internet and big-box stores selling cheap goods from China, the line between national and international began to blur.

Don't make such a big deal out of this trade deficit…. In the United States you cannot find anybody to produce such labor-intensive products and it will be more expensive if you were to import such products from other countries and the regions than China. Only China is in the best position to produce such products, and this is also beneficial to China because this has provided job opportunities to China.

History is full of examples of poorer nations that become wealthy by exploiting their comparative advantage in cheap labor to become globally competitive in a range of manufacturing industries.... If robots are expected to take over many of the menial jobs currently performed by people, the concern should not be for the working class in wealthy countries but for the billions living in the developing world who will now have lost the only established ladder out of poverty.

People are worried about what’s going to happen to their jobs. There’s a lot of off-shoring and out-sourcing taking place. There’s a lot more mobility of labor and of people. Unless we explain what’s happening, people will resort to protectionism and xenophobia.

One by one, trade and investment barriers will continue to be swept away by globalization, like leaves on an autumn day…The new challenge will be less to regulate relations among national economies, than to establish the rules and structures of a transnational economy.

We're part of a global economy whether we like it or not.

A global economy is a fact of life .... No politician can promise to protect you from it.

Let’s export American products, not American jobs.

If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.

Globalization has very materially improved the standard of living in the Unitied States... as it has for those countries that have chosen to operate with free trade…. Although none of us likes our competitors, competition has greatly improved our standard of living.

We want to export our products but not our jobs.

If a foreign country can make a good cheaper than we can better buy it from them.

Free trade is hard to sell politically.

Mexican exports worldwide benefit the U.S. economy because of their high percentage of U. S. content.

Donald Trump outsources his ties to China. He outsourced his furniture to Turkey. I know a company in Ohio that could make that furniture in Archibald, Ohio.

We know that trade, NAFTA, the free and open trade between Canada and the U.S. creates millions of good jobs on both sides of the border.

Nobody is making Americans buy Chinese goods.

I've seen the impact of poorly negotiated trade agreements on manufacturing in Maine.

The overwhelming number of Democrats... think our trade policy has gone in the wrong direction. They think that our trade policy encourages companies to leave the country. They think our trade policy has caused more and more businesses to outsource.