It is an attractive topic to discuss about different perspective between business person and economist in particular about exports and jobs. Paul Krugman (1996) had described about the different perspective of business person and economist which can cause debate in the society.
To begin, at present most countries at all over the world have been connected each others, particularly in trading. There are many countries had made agreement for free trade in certain area. Those countries, particularly the business person in those countries, believe that by applying free trade area, they can gain bigger profit. The producers in the country can raise the sales of their products by selling it to other countries. One of the implications of sales volume rise is that there will be plenty of job fields created in the exporter country, in particular export-related jobs.
Yet the economists may have different perspective to see this problem because they tend to see the economy problems worldwide. The export of a country is import of another country. Consequently, a country which runs trade deficits, i.e. a country which imports exceed exports, will have higher unemployment than successful exporter country. It means that the number of jobs will not be significantly changed globally.
However, based upon brief analysis earlier, I can say that free trade agreement will only give good impact for a successful exporter country. Nevertheless the countries which run trade deficits such as Indonesia will only get devastating effects of free trade area.
Reference:
Krugman, Paul. (1996). A Country Is Not A Company. Harvard Business Review.
