Economists Sharply Split Over Trade Deal Effects
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and presidential candidates are having their say about the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade accord that is President Obama’s top economic priority in his final year in office. But lately the liveliest debate over the deal is among blue-ribbon economists.

On Monday, it was the critics’ turn: Economists from Tufts University unveiled their study concluding that the pact, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, would cause some job losses and exacerbate income inequality in each of the dozen participating nations, but especially in the largest — the United States.

Supporting the authors at the National Press Club was Jared Bernstein, who was the top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during Mr. Obama’s first term.

The conclusions of the Tufts economists contradict recent positive findings from the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the World Bank about the trade pact, which would be the largest regional accord in history and would bind nations including Canada, Chile, Australia and Japan.

Each side in the economists’ debate has criticized the economic model that the other used to reach its results, while opponents and supporters of the trade accord have quickly seized upon whichever analysis buttressed their own views.

Michael B. Froman, Mr. Obama’s trade representative, plans to join other trade ministers in Auckland, New Zealand, on Thursday for the formal signing of the trade deal, which they finished in October after years of negotiations.

The future of the deal, however, depends on the approval of a sharply divided Congress. The administration is believed to lack enough support for passage, though votes are not expected until after the November election. Some other nations are delaying their own ratification processes pending American action.

Election-year pressures are not helping the president’s cause, as leading candidates in both parties are opposing the trade agreement.

Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate, told the conservative website Breitbart News over the weekend that as president he would stop what he called “Hillary’s Obamatrade.”

Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic contender, has criticized the final agreement after praising it while it was being negotiated. She continues to be assailed by her main rival for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for her early support.

Against this backdrop, the economists from prestigious universities and research institutions have been providing their takes and debating their differences just as intensely, though with more scholarly reserve.

The analysis from the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts was titled “Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement,” and was written by the economists Jeronim Capaldo and Alex Izurieta, with Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former United Nations economic development official.

The authors wrote that they used “a more realistic model” for their analysis, and that previous reports that projected economic benefits from the trade accord were “based on unrealistic assumptions such as full employment” and unchanging income distribution.

The Tufts report projected that incomes in the United States would decline by a half-percentage point compared with the change expected without the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Peterson Institute’s report, by economists from Brandeis and Johns Hopkins universities, projected that incomes would rise by half a percentage point.

The Tufts paper also projected that the overall economies of the United States and Japan would contract slightly. Employment in the United States would decline by 448,000 jobs; total job losses in the dozen nations would be 771,000 — a small share of the nations’ total work forces, yet hardly a selling point for leaders seeking to ratify the trade agreement.

The Obama administration has acknowledged that some jobs would be lost, especially in manufacturing and in industries that employ workers with lower skills, but it has said that those losses would be offset by new jobs created in export-reliant industries that pay more on average. The Peterson Institute report offered evidence for that argument, while concluding that there would be no net change in overall employment in the United States.

The other parties to the pact are Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and Brunei.

“Economic gains would be negligible for other participating countries — less than one percent over 10 years for developed countries, and less than three percent for developing countries,” the Tufts report said.

It also had bad news for countries, including China, that are not parties to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose participants account for nearly 40 percent of the world economy.

“We project negative effects on growth and employment in non-T.P.P. countries,” the report said. “This increases the risk of global instability and a race to the bottom, in which labor incomes will be under increasing pressure.”

The authors’ explicit criticism of models and data used by other economists provoked swift counter-criticism. Robert Z. Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute, wrote a blog piece on Monday expounding on why the institute’s analysis was “superior on all counts” and better suited to specifically gauging the impact of megatrade agreements.

TPP今在紐西蘭簽署 美學者唱衰

「跨太平洋夥伴協定（TPP）」成員國代表四日將在紐西蘭簽署這項去年十月談成的協定，但美國經濟學界最近開始爭論TPP到底有沒有好處。塔夫斯大學學者認為，TPP會讓十二個成員國失業率上升、收入不平等情況更嚴重，尤其是美國；智庫「彼得森國際經濟研究所」學者則指出，TPP生效後，流失的工作機會將被新增的抵消，美國總體就業率不會改變。

紐約時報報導，塔夫斯大學「全球發展與環境研究所」經濟學者卡帕多、伊蘇列塔與曾在聯合國擔任經濟發展官員的桑德拉姆，一日共同發表論文「TPP帶來的失業、不平等和其他風險」。

他們指出，有些研究報告主張TPP會給美國帶來經濟利益，這些報告是以「不切實際的假設為基礎」，如完全就業、收入分配情況不變，他們則採用「更務實的模型」來分析。

這三位學者開記者會發表唱衰TPP的研究報告，獲得美副總統拜登的前首席經濟顧問伯恩斯坦支持。

塔夫斯學者預測，TPP生效會讓美國人均收入下降零點五個百分點。

彼得森研究所一月廿五日則發表布蘭戴斯大學與約翰霍普金斯大學經濟學者撰寫的研究報告，預測人均收入會增加零點五個百分點。

塔夫斯學者還預測，TPP會讓美國與日本經濟成長率小幅減少；美國將失去四十四萬八千個工作機會，TPP十二國總共將失去七十七萬一千個工作機會，雖然這只占十二國總體勞動力的一小部分，但這個預測結果不利成員國領袖說服其國會批准TPP。

紐時說，雖然TPP四日將簽署，但美國國會在今年十一月總統與國會大選後才會表決是否批准。目前美國國會對TPP意見紛歧，歐巴馬政府欠缺足夠支持讓TPP過關。不少成員國因此暫時觀望，延後批准程序靜待美國的發展。

歐巴馬政府承認，TPP會讓某些工作機會消失，尤其是製造業和雇用低技能勞工的產業；不過，消失的工作機會會被仰賴出口的產業新增的職缺抵消，且這種產業平均薪資較高。彼得森研究所的報告為這種主張提供佐證，並總結說，美總體就業率不會改變。

塔夫斯學者預測，「TPP為美國以外成員國帶來的經濟成長幾乎微不足道，已開發國家十年內都不會超過百分之一，開發中國家不會超過百分之三」。

塔夫斯學者還預期，就算是沒加入TPP的國家（如中國大陸），其經濟成長和就業情況也會受到TPP的負面影響，「全球不穩定、勞工收入被壓低的風險因此增加」。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/business/international/economists-sharply-split-over-trade-deal-effects.html

2016-02-04．聯合報．A5．財經．編譯李京倫