Two decades ago, Adrian Wood, a British economist, started arguing that trade with low-wage countries lowered wages for unskilled workers in developed countries. “There is a clear inverse association,” Wood wrote in a 1995 paper. “Countries with larger increases in import penetration experienced larger falls in manufacturing employment.” But in the United States, Wood had to concede, imports of manufactured goods from lowwage countries still totaled less than three percent of gross domestic product. By itself, that wasn’t enough to displace many workers. Wood answered by arguing the effects were subtle and indirect. For example, he wrote that imports from low-wage countries required more labor than other goods, and therefore displaced more U.S.

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