ATLANTA — Contrary to the rhetoric of  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — and CNN’s Lou Dobbs, for that matter — free trade continues to greatly benefit American workers.

 That was some of the good news from Heritage’s Resource Bank ^[1]meeting this morning as Ambassador Terry Miller, who directs our Center for International Trade and Economics, moderated a panel on trade. Other experts included CATO Institute’s Daniel Griswold, the IMANI Center for Policy & Education’s Franklin Cudjoe ^[2] and the Dominican Republic Center for Export and Investment’s Eddy Martinez.

Griswold, who has faced down Dobbs on air, passed around a fact sheet that’s well worth sharing. Check out these facts ^[3]:

• Trade has had no discernible, negative effect on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. Our economy is at full employment, with 16.5 million more people working than a decade ago.
• Trade accounts for only about 3 percent of dislocated workers. Technology and other domestic factors displace far more workers.
• Average real compensation per hour paid to American workers, which includes benefits as well as wages, increased by 22 percent in the past decade.
• Median U.S. household income is 6 percent higher in real dollars than it was a decade ago at a comparable point in the previous business cycle. Middle-class households have moved up the income ladder, not down.
• The net loss of 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade has been overwhelmed by a net gain of 11.6 million jobs in sectors where the average wage is higher than in manufacturing. Two-thirds of the net new jobs created since 1997 are in sectors where workers earn more than in manufacturing.
• The median net worth of U.S. households jumped by almost one-third between 1995 and 2004, from $70,800 to $93,100.