Federal Aid Does Little For Free Trade's Losers

The title of this story from today's WSJ says it all: "Federal Aid Does Little For Free Trade's Losers". But that's the point. The problem isn't that federal aid is doing to little (as the story implies). The problem is that it's doing anything at all. Creative destruction. It seems ludicrous in retrospect that we would have subsidized coopers and wheelwrights. This is the same story.

Then there's the little nagging problem of such a law being clearly unconstitutional.

Federal Aid Does Little For Free Trade's Losers - WSJ.com: "GALAX, Va. -- For more than 80 years, the people of Webb Furniture crafted wooden dressers and other furniture here at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In January, under pressure from Chinese imports, Webb shuttered its Galax plant and fired all 309 employees.

Tonya Graber lost more than her job painting furniture. The single mother also lost health insurance for herself and her 12-year-old son. Under a government program aimed at helping workers harmed by trade, Ms. Graber was eligible for federally subsidized health insurance, but she couldn't afford it.

She isn't alone. The Health Coverage Tax Credit, tucked into a 2002 trade bill to win support in Congress, is supposed to cushion the blow to factory workers hurt by imports by paying 65% of the cost of health insurance. (The subsidy is also available to workers whose companies have dumped their pension plans on the government's pension insurer.) More than four years after the program began, just 11% of those potentially eligible for the subsidy are taking it -- or about 28,000 of the roughly 250,000 people the government estimates may qualify in a given year."

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economics trade free+trade healthcare