Bankers and Economists Fear a Spate of Threats to Global Growth<br />Referring to the founding father of the economic analysis of trade, Mr. Blinder said, “We economists think<br />that David Ricardo got it mostly right 200 years ago, and a lot of people think he got it badly wrong, and we haven’t convinced them in 200 years.”<br />But there is an emerging mountain of evidence that economists also have significantly<br />and systematically understated the disruptions caused by increased trade for workers, particularly in manufacturing, their families and their communities.<br />Congressional leaders and administration officials insist<br />that the necessary legislation will pass before the government reaches its borrowing limit sometime in October, but President Trump on Thursday described the situation as a “mess.”<br />Mr. Powell, a Republican who helped persuade his party to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 and 2013, warned in a pair of interviews on the financial networks CNBC and Fox Business<br />that a default would deliver “a major shock to the economy.” That is “not something we need right now,” he added dryly.<br />— In the decade since the financial crisis, economic policy makers, professors<br />and protesters have gathered here every August to argue about the best ways to return to faster economic growth.<br />“The backlash reflects that trade makes some individuals worse off.”<br />The idea that developed nations should focus on reaping the benefits of trade,<br />and then worry about offsetting the costs, has produced large benefits, particularly for the wealthy — and large uncompensated costs, particularly for the workers.
