Free trade is beneficial for everyone involved.

Be it local free trade, or global free trade, the benefits are

overwhelming. Productivity is enhanced by individuals being able to focus their efforts on what they do
best. I don’t make shoes, I focus on my job. If I wasted my time making my own shoes, I’d have less time
to spend on the job I do well, so my productivity would decrease.

This is the same for everyone. It’s called the Division of Labor. The greater the scope of this division of
labor, the more people involved who focus on what they do best and then trade with others for what
those others do best, the greater the wealth created.

A real “free trade” deal is maybe two sentences: There are no barriers to imports from X. There are no
barriers to exports to X. The United States, for example, is a huge free trade zone between the various
states.

Managed Trade, however, is when governments pick and choose who will succeed and who will fail.
Managed Trade causes problems by erecting barriers to trade, reducing the division of labor, and making
everyone worse off than they would have been.

As to “lost jobs”, that’s Ludditeism. Buying labor where cost is least benefits everyone. Would the people
of New York City want textile sweatshops paying practically nothing? No. So that work must be done
somewhere. Better it be done where people are eager to work and build capital, so their children can be
engineers and artists. That’s what has happened everywhere.

Those who lose their jobs must find something they do better. That’s painful, yes, but so is childbirth.

There are so many different aspects to globalization that there is no simple answer to this. Different
elements of globalization, like other large scale phenomena, have many positive and negative effects on
different regions, groups, cultures, and businesses.

A typical example of this would be environmental impact. On the one hand, globalization means that
goods are transported over long distances.

Free trade is meant to eliminate unfair barriers to global commerce and raise the economy in developed
and developing nations alike. But free trade can – and has – produced many negative effects, in particular
deplorable working conditions, job loss, economic damage to some countries, and environmental damage
globally. Yet, the World Trade Organization continues to advocate for free and unfettered trade, much to
the detriment of some national economies and millions of workers.

"Trade is responsible for two job losses out of ten. What happens is the other eight are lost not because
of trade but they are lost because of new technologies, innovation, higher productivity."

Effects on the Environment

"For centuries world trade has increased not only environmental degradation but also global inequality.
The expanding ecological footprints of affluent people are unjust as well as unsustainable. The concepts
developed in wealthier nations to celebrate 'growth' and 'progress' obscure the net transfers of labor time
and natural resources between richer and poorer parts of the world."

Free trade agreements lead to dangerous working conditions and environmental damage.
As underdeveloped countries attempt to cut costs to gain a price advantage, many workers in these
countries face low pay, substandard working conditions and even forced labor and abusive child labor.
Most developing countries insist any attempt to include working conditions in trade agreements is meant
to end their cost advantage in the world market, which allows them to have free reign over the abusive
conditions they allow their citizens to work in. In addition, the increase of corporate farms in developing
countries increases pesticide and energy use, and many countries ignore the costly environmental
standards included in most trade agreements. The greed of those countries involved in free trade
agreements often times stops them from thinking morally and in regards to the common man and his
environment.