The Pros And Cons Of Free Trade

The concept of free trade is like the concept of a free market, except that it is international. Free trade allows international actors within the international trade sphere to do as they please without tariffs or restrictions from the nations involved. It was intended to increase economic prosperities. Countries around the world had supported free trade for their own individual reasons. The United States had been involved with free trade since NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) passed and eventually the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). Since then, there have been questions on whether or not free trade was a good idea and if it still is a good idea. In the case for free trade, free trade has been argued to have contributed greatly to the US’s economic …show more content…
Corporations outsource jobs because it is cheaper, but the cost of cheaper labor comes from the low-wage workers in developing countries. Developing countries are put into a troublesome position where they have to juggle with the economic benefits of free trade and the abuse of their people. Joel Paul, a professor from the University of California, stated that under free trade, “[d]eveloping countries must compete for capital investment and jobs, and this competition leads countries to lower their labor standards in a self-destructive “race to the bottom” (Paul 200). The countries that benefits off of free trade the most are the countries where the corporations belong to and the countries that the corporations decide they want to do business with. Developing countries end up competing with each other to provide cheaper labor in order to attract and keep foreign investments. This dependency on the investment of corporations jeopardizes the sovereignty of these nations. Nations cannot make their own decisions to protect the health and safety of their own people because they are under the pressure to keep these corporations