re: #342 Romantic Heretic

It means that ‘free trade’ is simply a method that allows corporations to avoid any sort of social responsibility from taxes to workplace safety.

NAFTA (Not A Free Trade Agreement) is typical. About 97% of the trade between Canada and the US before NAFTA was free, that is free of duties and tariffs. What it did was allow companies in the Northern States and Canada which had high taxation and standards of employment to move their operations to the Southern States and Mexico which did not. The result was that some places lost jobs while other places got those jobs but in a manner that did little to improve their prosperity. Corporations and the wealthy prospered immensely.

What ‘free trade agreements’ do is remove the ability of a nation and its people to regulate how business is conducted and give it to corporations. If the people try to do so the corporations simply bugger off some place where they won’t be bothered with such ephemera as ethics.

As I said, ‘free trade agreements’ have nothing to do with free trade.

Free Trade seems like a good idea, but in practice —eh …