I was struck by the notion of “personal dignity” in USTR Lighthizer’s recent article “How to Make Trade Work for Workers.” He framed the article by asking the question: “What should the objective of trade policy be?” Instead of the goals of promoting world peace and economic efficiency, Lighthizer argued that the objective of trade policy should be to ensure that most citizens in the society have “stable and well-paying jobs”. The “jobs v. trade” dichotomy is well known. What is new to me is his explanation of why jobs are so important:
Those obsessed with efficiency tend to see employment simply as a means of allocating resources and ensuring production. In so doing, they greatly undervalue the personal dignity that individuals derive from meaningful work. Commentators from Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century to Arthur Brooks and Oren Cass today have written eloquently about the central role of work in a well-ordered society. Doing honest work for a decent wage instills feelings of self-worth that come from being needed and contributing to society. Stable, remunerative employment reinforces good habits and discourages bad ones. That makes human beings better spouses, parents, neighbors, and citizens. By contrast, the loss of personal dignity that comes from the absence of stable, well-paying employment is not something that can be compensated for either by increased consumption of low-cost imported goods or by welfare checks. …
When it comes to taxes, health care, environmental regulation, and other issues, policymakers routinely balance efficiency with other competing goals. They should do the same for trade.
Thus, what Lighthizer is calling for amounts to treating the “personal dignity” associated with decent jobs as a non-trade value, which, like public health and environmental protection, should be balanced against the value of economic efficiency in trade policy. Considering that mental health is a serious health problem in modern societies and that it has become unrealistic to expect the large number of workers displaced by foreign competition to be retrained for new jobs in the post-industrial era (which is one of Lighthizer’s points), the issue of personal dignity associated with jobs does merit our attention. The fact that this issue is mostly one of developed countries rather than developing countries should not detract from its importance.
In this regard, I was reminded that trade and employment are two equal values enshrined in the Havana Charter. The employment provisions appear in Chapter II of the Charter, whereas the commercial policy provisions - most of which were adopted by the GATT - were set out in Chapter IV. Although the term “full employment” also appears in the preambles of the GATT and the WTO Agreement, in reality the notion remains merely a lofty slogan. In a similar vein, the right to work is recognized as one of the human rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (article 6).
At this particular juncture in history, however, recognizing the “personal dignity” of work as a distinct value would have profound implications for trade law. It seems to me that two major questions need to be discussed. First, the normative question: should the personal dignity associated with jobs be recognized as a non-trade value? If so, then the operational question: how can the existing trade agreements accommodate such a value? In practice, almost all the “protectionist” tools can be used to protect jobs, such as tariffs, subsidies, and trade remedies. Hence, it seems all we need to do is to rebalance trade liberalization against job protection. But how should the proper balance be drawn? Can WTO law accommodate the value of personal dignity without amending its rules or major adjustments in its jurisprudence? These difficult issues might arise, for instance, if Lighthizer initiates renegotiation of US tariffs en masse, presumably under GATT Article XXVIII. I would be interested in hearing your opinions.
