Trade with Mexico and California Jobs

The increasing globalization of the U.S. economy has sparked a persistent debate over the effects of trade on labor markets, and this debate has been most heated when it involves trade between the United States and low-wage countries. This edition of California Economic Policy analyzes the effect of trade with Mexico on job loss in California. The author finds that in some sectors of the economy — particularly manufacturing — trade with Mexico has had a small but visible effect, but not the large-scale level of job destruction some had feared.