Cost of producing Acme Consumer Widget™ in two countries:

So why do we persist in calling trade agreements with countries that lack basic labour and environmental standards “free” trade agreements?

Prediction 1: in 20 years we will look back and wonder why the hell we didn’t realise that we were trading the basic modern standards we have fought for for and developed over the last century or so for cheaper goods and services in the short term.

Things are only “cheaper” to make in these countries in instant dollar terms – the actual costs are borne by the workers there who suffer extraordinarily poor conditions, the workers here who lose their jobs or have their conditions eroded in the name of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘efficiency’, and by all of us who live in a degraded and polluted environment thanks to outsourcing our productive industries to countries with poor environmental standards.

Prediction 2: at some point in the future, the notion of ‘protectionism’ will be revised to permit the imposition of tariffs on countries whose standards fall significantly below our own in order to defend those standards in our own country and remove the economic incentive to exploit labour and destroy the environment.  It will be recognised that there is a distinction between using trade barriers to protect inefficient industries and using trade barriers to protect legitimate human rights and environmental standards.

As Robert A Heinlein put it, TANSTAAFL (”There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”, a theme in Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).