Trade Agreements Must Put Workers First

Of all the technical flaws in the badly broken international trade system, the one most intuitive to the layman is the race to the bottom on labor. In the global free market, multinational corporations have a strong incentive to set up shop not where labor is most productive but where it has the least power and can be most easily exploited. For nations eager to attract investment, selling out their own workers is a sure path to success, and sometimes a necessary one.

Corporations, of course, were thrilled with this model. Jack Welch, the longtime CEO at General Electric, famously remarked that “ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge” able to sail from port to port, pitting the workers at each against one another. Cheap labor drove rising profits and stock prices, and, to quote Club for Growth founder Stephen Moore, “Cheap labor leads to a booming stock market? That benefits everyone.” Except, obviously, the workers, their families and communities, and ultimately any nations that attempt to do right by them.