““Free Trade: The stage of trade policy that followed mercantilist and protectionist success in raising first Britain and then the United States and Germany to industrial and financial dominance. Pulling up the ladder, these leading industrial nations demand that other countries open their markets to lead-nation exports and investment instead of protecting, subsidizing and modernizing their own industry and agriculture. Such “free trade” has become a euphemism for centralizing industrial, agricultural and financial power in the United States, while offshoring employment to the low-wage countries. Academic rationalization of this kind of globalization is based on short-term equilibrium theory that excludes consideration of how protectionist policies may support capital investment to raise productivity over time. Also ignored are “off balance sheet” costs borne by society to clean up environmental pollution””
