On Fears for Free Trade

Tyler Cowen argued that:

What’s really happening is that many people, whether in the United States or abroad, are unduly suspicious about economic relations with foreigners. These complaints stem from basic human nature — namely, our tendency to divide people into “in groups” and “out groups” and to elevate one and to demonize the other. Americans fear that foreigners will rise at their expense or “control” some aspects of the economy.

Dani Rodrik retorted:

So the "us" and "them" characterization that Tyler attributes to irrational nativism perhaps has more to do with the absence of a common set of international rules on labor standards, environment, consumer safety, and so on.

Now, an anecdotal evidence from the English Premier League (I know Rodrik roots for ManU, and I Arsenal -- not that this fact's important though), on foreign players' impact on the three-lions national team performance, its Chairman said:

Does the Premier League hurt the national side? I think the answer to that has got to be yes.

What is more common than football's set of rules and standard? Yet, this Englishman prefers to blame those non-Britons players for the lousy performance of its national team that even doesn't qualify for Euro 2008 final round.

I can not imagine the EPL without foreign players.