How did trade with China affect the United States? In Washington, the consensus is that it cost Americans jobs. A central concern is the negative impact on manufacturing jobs and U.S. employment more generally.  But that’s not necessarily the case, according to multiple studies highlighted in this month’s Harvard Business Review.

So, what does a broader review of the data from multiple studies show? Scholars generally find that prior to 2010, imports from China negatively affected manufacturing jobs in the U.S. However, there are mixed findings on the net effect on the economy, the final balance of jobs lost in manufacturing, and the growth in service sector jobs. There is also no evidence of trade with China having a significant negative effect on jobs after 2010 — the job loss in manufacturing documented in the early 2000s due to trade with China is not continuing today.   

There is, however, one result that all scholars seem to agree on: better-educated, more economically diverse regions of the United States were affected far less by the surge in imports from China. This finding is consistent with data on the impact of globalization in other countries, where better education and opportunities for retraining improved the likelihood that workers would benefit from international trade