Politics & Power Quote by Martin Feldstein

Feldstein’s sentence is doing the economist’s favorite magic trick: turning a politically radioactive subject (globalization’s winners and losers) into a calm, almost frictionless mechanism. “Relative price” is the key softener. He’s not railing against “cheap foreign labor” in moral terms; he’s describing a lever in a model. If the lever moves - if imports from low-wage producers get pricier relative to domestic alternatives - American shoppers will predictably pivot. The intent is technocratic persuasion: frame trade shifts as consumer choice responding to prices, not as a cultural battle over jobs or national identity.

The subtext is sharper. By naming “low wage manufacturers in Asia and Latin America,” Feldstein smuggles labor conditions and wage gaps into the analysis without litigating them. The phrase functions like a neutral label, but it quietly reminds readers that the competitive edge is not ingenuity; it’s payroll. “Less attractive” is another euphemism: a gentle stand-in for “we will buy less from them,” with all the downstream consequences for supply chains, employment, and geopolitics.

Context matters: Feldstein was a major voice in late-20th-century policy debates where inflation, currency values, and trade imbalances were treated as solvable through incentives rather than solidarity. The line also presumes a stable American consumer whose primary allegiance is to price. That’s often true, but it’s also a rhetorical choice that sidelines questions voters actually fight over: who bears the cost of “adjustment,” how quickly communities can rebuild, and whether “cheap” goods are cheap only because the real costs are paid elsewhere.