As for the argument that free trade negatively impacts the poorer nations involved, I would ask you - is it better for a Vietnamese peasant to work in a sweatshop for low wages, or to starve to death? Every modern nation that has risen from the mire of poverty has started at this level, including the United States. As low-paid workers still manage to better their lives, they pass on these benefits to their children in the form of better education and healthier lives, and those children take the next step to higher paid and less demanding and stressful jobs.

The United States itself once started along this path.

To deny poor nations the ability to lift themselves out of abject poverty by refusing to trade with them is the height of global irresponsibility.