. . . argues Ruchir Sharma in this Washington Post piece. They may provide the additional manpower that aging nations will require to keep their economies humming.

This Forbes article, with accompanying video, challenges the notion that the U.S. has been hurt by global trade. Since its peak in 1979, the article states, U.S. manufacturing has lost 7 million jobs. Meanwhile, however, the economy has added 53 million jobs in the service sector, the majority of which pay better than jobs in manufacturing. If this data is correct, perhaps a better focus of our energies would be in raising the wages of those service jobs—in retail, the hospitality industry, and other low-skill sectors—which do not allow a comfortable standard of living, and in making sure there is a decent-paying job available for every citizen who wants one.

In this 2008 article, Case Western econ professor Susan Helper argued that “continuing hemorrhaging in this sector is not inevitable.” The solutions she proposed: developing human capital, universal healthcare, investments in green energy and infrastructure, and public-private partnerships that help U.S. industry find its competitive niches. We are still waiting for such enlightened policies.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and economist Jared Bernstein, former advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, argue that the opaque processes used to negotiate trade deals must be opened up, and the “needs of low- and middle-income families” prioritized in the management of the ineluctable globalization of trade. Among their concrete proposals: make any “benefits to partner countries in terms of market access” contingent upon “confirmation that labor and environmental rights” are already being enforced.

The Accidental President’s specious (of course) accusations of unfair currency manipulation notwithstanding, it is upon engineering excellence, finding the right niche markets, a focus on human capital development, and a spirit of cooperation between management and labor that Germany’s success in international trade has been built, argues Jeff Guo in The Washington Post.

Globalized trade and immigrant flows each has its benefits as well as drawbacks, its proponents as well as its critics. Will policy-makers be able to find, as this writer suggests, a “middle ground between extremes?”

This New York Times piece looks at the complexities of revising trade pacts.

“Cheap imports were a windfall for American consumers,” states this Economist review of free trade’s effects on the U.S. But the pain of disruption—felt disproporionately in the South and Midwest—has not been addressed by government.

According to Mark Muro of the Brookings Institute, “Trump’s promise to bring back production jobs ignores the realities of advanced manufacturing.” The return of more manufacturing won’t bring back many jobs, Muro writes, “because the labor is increasingly being done by robots.”

“The global economy has arrived at a sobering period of reckoning,” states this New York Times piece. “The debates that we are having about globalization and the adjustment cost . . . we should have been having when we did Nafta, and when China entered the W.T.O.”    For anyone confused over the free-trade – protectionism debate (and who isn’t?) this excellent article provides some crucial benchmarks.  The skinny: expanded trade has many benefits, but wise governments (i.e., social democrats) have a duty to cushion its disrupting effects.

Trump has portrayed Germany as a malfeasant predator on American jobs. The real picture isn’t nearly so neat, writes Mark Landler in this New York Times piece.