by Robert Heston

Created on: September 17, 2010   Last Updated: September 18, 2010

The name free trade is a misnomer intended to deceive people into supporting it.  The concept itself is a noble idea that will never play out in reality.  Greed, corruption, and the manipulation of many by the few, argue against free trade ever working as it's touted. The Libertarian concept of free trade isn't free for working men and women.

Daniel Griswold delivered a lecture in Salt Lake City, Utah on September 14th, 2010, named after his book, "Mad About Trade:  Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization".  Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.  The theme driving this lecture was the supposed benefits of free trade and globalization.  The Cato Institute is considered by many to be the Libertarian think tank.

Griswold claimed that Americans vote with their dollars every day for globalization.  This can be proven by taking an inventory of all the items in any room of your home.  The vast majority of them will be imports.

Never mentioned was the tax breaks given to corporations in the past that encouraged them to relocate to foreign countries.  This mass migration of American companies to foreign lands stripped America of its manufacturing base to the point that "buying American" isn't always possible anymore.

Griswold called trade a "free market anti trust policy".  The government bailouts of large banks, and corporations weren't brought up.  But if American banks and businesses can be too big to fail what's preventing international banks and corporations from becoming too big to fail?

In the late 90's Swingline Stapler, a union company moved their manufacturing facilities from Long Island, New York to Mexico.  The union fought this move and they lost a few hundred jobs when it happened.  Presently the company makes its staplers in China and the cost of a stapler is less than if they were still manufactured in New York.

It's hard to argue against companies such as Swingline moving their production facilities to foreign countries.  However it's easy to make a case against strategic industries moving elsewhere.  We've lost so many strategic industries that we're no longer the economic power house we once were.  As a nation, the U.S. is weaker because of that.

Griswold claimed that the U.S. has lost 5 million mainly low end jobs, many of them "union jobs".  But they've been replaced with 16 million "good paying service jobs". 

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