Tricky Trade Questions

This Op Ed piece in the New York Times this week raises some apparently very shocking questions about how productivity is measured and the supposed benefits of 'offshoring' jobs and trade. These kinds of arguments are everywhere, but is the analysis correct? In thinking about this, you might want to remember the 'Iowa car crop" example from Krugman that we discussed in early in the year. Also, what is American labour productivity? Should it reflect the average labour productivity of every human being across the globe that has contributed to the goods we produce? Is it misleading to only count U.S. based labour? What if China had machines to make the goods rather than people? Would it, as the op-ed implies, make U.S. consumers better off to choose policies that target a more 'global' labour productivity measure instead? If we decided to do that (for whatever reason), what would those policies likely look like, anyway?