What globalization hath wrought: 1.8 million jobs lost to China
Since 2001, unfettered trade with China has directly resulted in the loss of 1.8 million US jobs, and they won't be coming back:
Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China's entry into the WTO has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment, according to the report, "Costly Trade with China."
Free trade is not the same as fair trade. In 2006, the US imported over $233 billion more stuff from China than we exported to China. Our total trade deficit with the entire world last year was a whopping $764 billion. These staggering numbers represent capital that has permanently left the United States. We cannot continue this trend forever (as Alan Greenspan has been warning us for years now).
Free trade agreements such as GATT and NAFTA lack any serious means of braking the hemorrhaging of jobs and capital out of our economy. We've spent many years exporting our (formerly) high-wage manufacturing jobs to sweatshops in India, China, and Bangladesh. American workers have nothing to show for it, and foreign workers have nothing to show for it. The companies allowed to export our jobs have benefited tremendously, as have the owners of the foreign sweatshops (and sometimes those are the same company -- *cough cough* Nike *cough cough*).
Without globalized unions and serious enforcement measures against unfair trade practices, free trade represents nothing more than a race to the bottom. Our trade deficit is merely a symptom of a much larger disease. Since corporations can globalize with unfettered access and little to no interference, trade unions should be allowed to do exactly the same thing.