And North Carolina recognized they had a great opportunity to become a magnet for the health care industry. And a lot of their textile workers -- with government help, called trade adjustment assistance -- went to community colleges to gain new skills. And it turns out that when you analyze what happened, just the added value -- just kind of the increase in productivity and the relevancy of the job training made the wages higher for those than they were in the textile industry. There's a classic example of how to respond, rather than throwing up trade barriers.
Secondly, a lot of people don't understand this fact, that by having our markets open it's good for consumers. The more consumers get to choose, the more choice there is on the shelves, the less likely it is there will be inflation. And one of the great things about open markets is that markets respond to the collective wisdom of consumers. And so, therefore, it makes sense to have more choice, more opportunities. And yet when you read, "made from" another country on the shelves of our stores, people automatically assume that jobs are fragile. And so we've got to do a better job of educating people about the benefits of trade.
Third, it's -- sometimes, when times are tough, it's easy to -- it's much easier to find a -- somebody else to blame. And sometimes that somebody else that's easier to blame is somebody in a distant land.
And so those are the some of the fact -- and plus it's easy politics. It's easy to go around and hammer away on trade. It's -- and I guess if you're the kind of person that followed polls and focus groups, that's what your tendency to be. I'm the kind of person who doesn't give a darn about polls and focus groups, and I do what I think is right. And what is right is making sure that -- (applause.) And sometimes if you're going to lead this country, you have to stand in the face of what appears to be a political headwind.
And so those are some of the dynamics that makes it hard. And I'm troubled by isolationism and protectionism. As a matter of fact, I dedicated part of my State of the Union address a couple of years ago to this very theme. And what concerns me is, is that the United States of America will become fatigued when it comes to fighting off tyrants, or say it's too hard to spread liberty, or use the excuse that just because freedom hadn't flourished in parts of the world, therefore it's not worth trying, and that, as a result, we kind of retrench and lose confidence in our -- the values that have made us a great nation in the first place.
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