Reply #8: We're not talking about all production...

[Solon]

but production of refined products. This excludes resources that are geographically limited(mines, oil fields), and also food sources dependent on certain climates. If free trade is to work, then it should be limited to those particular items and resources, refined products, however, are different. Rings aren't made where the diamond and gold mines are located, neither is oil refined in Saudi Arabia for the United States to use. As far as the evidence suggests, the most free trade has to offer, as practiced right now, is causing the middle class to disappear, worldwide, and permanently impoversioning the poor in third world countries, mostly in Central/South America and Africa.

Even more atrocious is this, in many of these places, while it was no paradise before, at the very least, there were substinence farmers. Now, they are practically outlawed, and boys and girls as young as six years old, from these families, are now forced to work over 12 hours a day to provide one meal a day for the family. That's progress?