Should my parents have not fed me veggies as a child because they were icky to me?
Your metaphor is literally "government is your parent, listen to it, it knows what's best for you". Some people would have problems with that. One wonders what other kinds of government don't require the consent of the governed.
Free trade, sure it's good. But when we have big subsidies on our agriculture, import tariffs and quotas, isn't that protectionism?
Or how about forcing foreign generic drug producers to shut down in order to protect patent holders from competition? Isn't that protectionism?
It seems that free trade, as it has been practiced, hasn't really lined up with the economic ideals of free trade.
How about the question of capital mobility and comparative advantage? How much are these deals are about reducing barriers to the trade of goods, and how much are they about loosening restrictions on capital flow? AFAIK, tariffs are already low. Didn't Krugman say that the benefits due to further reducing tariffs would be really small?
And what about the evidence of certain trade liberalization policies being correlated with rising income inequality? Also, there is correlation between higher income inequality and higher perceptions of corruption.
What if your country has a potential advantage that can out-compete all other countries around the world, but is never allowed to arise to that level, since it would be out-competed early on?
What about the cost of transporting a good not factoring in the external cost of pollution? Not to mention all that each product is now assembled from parts shipped from 10 different countries.
As a moral issue, I don't want improved economic efficiency if it's derived from countries with no child labor laws, or other egregious labor violations.
Likewise, the improved economic "efficiency" derived from countries with lax emissions laws is illusory, because the external costs will eventually be forced upon us all.
Another thing. The "non-tariff barriers". Is this what allowed tobacco companies to sue Australia for implementing plain-packaging laws? How much money did Australia have to spend to defend itself against the suit? What if a weaker country couldn't afford to spend that much?
Who gets to define if your law is a "non-tariff barrier" to trade anyway?
The arguments above are why I am currently wary of "free trade" as it has been implemented. I am not opposed to free trade in principle. I don't deny that it provides benefits for everyone, if implemented well. TAA was shot down in congress. That shows that they aren't serious about mitigating the negatives.
in b4 xenophobia, nationalism