Free Trade Isn't Free
Part 1: The Billpayers
I was incredibly privileged to grow up in a time that could be considered an American golden age. Living in the suburbs of a mid size city in North Carolina during the 1990s was like living out a modern Norman Rockwell painting. We had a decent economy supported by tobacco, textiles, and furniture where a blue collar worker could earn a modest, but comfortable living. These industries helped support an ecosystem of small businesses run by our neighbors, many of whom we would regularly see at church or Friday night football. My middle class neighborhood was a mix of plumbers, pastors, doctors and folks who worked at the local tobacco plant. Salt of the earth, through and through.
These were the types of people who might not be able to wax poetic about Shakespeare or give you stock tips, but they would look after your kids when you had a family emergency or brought you food when you were sick. I remember when my family fell on hard times and had to downsize to a smaller home, our church threw us a housewarming party with a stack of gifts so big it looked like they had bought the entire Marth Stewart catalogue. These people didn’t have much, but because of their generosity, I didn’t even notice my family was less well off than before.
The reason all of this existed was because we had buy-in throughout our community. Our economic, social, and cultural lives were all intertwined. We bought our tools at the basketball coach’s store and hired the realtor lady from our church because we knew them. Could we have gotten a better deal elsewhere? Maybe, but that wasn’t the point. We did it because we understood the importance of supporting our neighbors. Their success was our success.
Beginning around the 2000s I began to notice a palpable change. The textile and furniture plants, once foundations of our economy, were shipped overseas. Tobacco was regulated into oblivion. Over time, the mom and pop businesses that supported these industries also went out of business. In their place were a series of a Wal Marts that now sold degraded Chinesium versions of what were once produced right down the road and sold in small shops in town. With the exit of the manufacturing economy also went the bonds that our community relied upon. We might not know our neighbors anymore, but at least we could buy as many $8 t shirts at Wal Mart as we wanted. Community events like sports games and church picnics would now have to contend with the rabid consumerism of the Black Friday sales.
As the local economy collapsed, so too did the trust we once had in each other. You didn’t see people at church as much any more. The local basketball rec league, once a weekend community focal point, had noticeably fewer parents in attendance. Those who did show up didn’t talk to each other much.
The despair this caused was nullified first by meth, followed shortly by opioids and fentanyl. I remember thinking it was pretty cool to see police helicopters circling the farm near my house, only to find out later they were scoping out meth labs with thermal cameras. Our local drug problem came to a fever pitch when my mom called me while I was at college to let me know my 8th grade teacher’s son had overdosed and died in a Taco Bell bathroom. He was still a teenager. Around the same time I had to return home for a funeral for my childhood friend’s mother. She had committed suicide—one of many deaths of despair that came to rock the community. Less than 8 years earlier, I remember she made us the best mac and cheese I’ve ever tasted while me and my buddy shot BB guns in the back yard. They lived in a double-wide in the middle of nowhere, but that didn’t matter. My Saturdays spent with them felt like paradise.
The story of my town is similar to thousands of places across America resulting from globalization and the so-called “free trade” that came along with it. Years earlier, politicians in Washington sold the farm by instituting policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement and granting China Most Favored Nation status. Communities like mine were told that by shipping our manufacturing overseas, we could unshackle ourselves from the dirty, backbreaking labor associated with making things. We would all work in offices, you see, making substantially higher wages than before while paying less for everyday goods. The deal seemed too good to be true—and of course it was.
What we weren’t told was that our entire local ecosystem would be hollowed out in order to continue the relentless pursuit of stocking shelves with the cheapest goods possible. This race to the bottom was ironic, because it dragged our society with it. The bonds and trust we built by supporting one another were gone. The success of our neighbors, once something we took pride in, was now viewed with envy and resentment. There was always going to be a billpayer for the brave new world of globalization, and it was our communities themselves. Maybe we didn’t know it at the time, or maybe we just didn’t care.