19. International Trade: Welfare and Policy 

Liberal arts background, still moving through this fascinating course during Covid days. Many thanks to MIT and Gruber for putting this online!

Thank you Jonathan and MIT for making this lecture open access.

This is so interesting, most especially the comparative advantage part, thank you Prof.

Great class and teacher. Very insightful.

Great learning. Thank you Prof.

I would have liked to have his opinion about the embargo on Iran and its economic repercussions.

Estou aqui pausando o vídeo em cada frase, para poder entender, obrigado professor, pela disposição de compartilhar seu conhecimento.🙌🇧🇷

Thanks MIT .Wish i discover this earlier

thank you prof. gruber. i always appreciate it

thanks for this insightful lesson.

Great Professor

How do you explain the price discrimination between export and local price market? For example: Let's say I am a fruit grower. Now there are barriers to entry for me to enter export market(like quality of my produce, dominance in the local market). So for me to enter the export I need to sell lower at the domestic level and then sell part of my produce ( by proving my dominance in my locality to the authorities) in the export market. What happens to the society welfare. Is it better this way or is it higher if the price is same(ideal conditions explained in this video)?

Interesting, if this is in the context of the services industry. Thank you.

Sir, what is the Pikachu Fallacy? I MUST know!!

Foreign policy and national economic policy.

Iam the first to be here so excited 🤩

Which country wastes the most energy and food？

I’m here so I can learn how to play Victoria 3

how can i get in MIT?

Did he say Billion as people to work lol

Chinese people do their best to produce goods for the all-around world at competitive price, why you think it is wrong？ Where you get the information，China wants international trade but The US does not want it, we all know that.

There's a lot of media bashing of China, much of it motivated by racist or ideological prejudice. On the prof's specific two points: (1) Regarding Chinese policies around foreign companies, WTO has a formal dispute resolution process, China has had fewer disputes than other parties such as the EU and US, and has generally actually abided by WTO resolutions in these disputes - unlike the US which regularly simply ignores them. (2) Regarding Chinese IP theft, again the evidence here is lacking for China actually stealing more IP than other similar countries in similar positions, all the cases I heard about are random small scale stuff that happens all the time between all countries. Citing the enforced joint-venture relationship as an avenue for IP theft is a popular media anti-China bashing tactic, but there is next-to-no evidence of this actually happening; any IP transfer is open and voluntary under the terms of the relationship. This legal framework trading foreign IP for access to your own market is a commonly accepted way for third world countries to develop, e.g. Singapore did it in the 1970s with no complaints from anyone.

About his Trump is always bad, pikachu fallacy thing. 2 things to note to make it work following his set of diagrams: - Trump administration surely doens't care about the loss in Chinese producer surplus (China's problem). I think it's weird we don't start by assuming no country cares about this, seems more likely. - About the loss in US' own surplus. Isn't the whole point the US has a lot of workless people? (If not in practice, then from a good politics perspective.) So the comparative advantage is no longer between roses and computers, but between roses and twiddling your thumbs. (Also in all his examples he assumes you get equal import export tradeoff. I'm not if everything he says always holds true if you're literally talking about a deficit. Yes, trade wars tho.) About immigration: - Is he making a differentiation between "for fun"(eg spoiled europeans)-, "empathy"(eg fugitives)- and illegal immigrants? - 3 is less than 10, but 9.9999999 is also less than 10. What's the difference between comparable and non-comparable US citizens? This both in population% and offense/welfare likelyhood. Does the immigrants their prescence negatively affect the offense/welfare likelyhood of comparable US citizens? Do you get more overall? In short, you need way more than these 2 megre statements. (Also, but this is subjective, it's not because you fucked up that you have to fuck up harder but at a slower pace. 9.5 < 10, do you really want more people like that? You might, but can't tell.) Honestly he's an incredible teacher, but this man watches wayyyyy too much Netflix.