COMMENT
The economic truth of free trade is fairly simple.
Both, or all, countries involved become richer over time.
However, that does not apply to every individual or industry
in either country. It applies to the average.
The additional wealth of free trade is generated by the
economic principle of specialization under which each country does more of what
it does best and less of what it does less well. Clearly there must then be
winners and losers in the various sectors of an economy. There's no escaping
that outcome.
You must distinguish between community interest on this
topic and individual interests.
In the rearrangements which take place under a trade treaty,
there will always be individual winners and losers.
Also, since all free trade agreements are actually
administered free trade under a detailed set of rules (as opposed to
theoretical completely free trade), there may actually be sectors of either
economy almost targeted for sacrifice as gains are permitted in others.
The overall validity of free trade is proved by Western
history. Centuries ago, individual villages, never mind nations, tried to do
everything for themselves from shoe-making to bread-baking.
But transportation opened access from one village to the
next, and people discovered the bread-maker in one place was better than in the
other place, and just the same for the shoe-maker.
Thus, free trade was born, and the modern era got going, and
our wealth has grown immensely.
Exactly the same principles hold on a global scale, too, now
that we have efficient global transportation and communications. There's simply
no stopping it in the long term, unless you want to be a kind of modern
Luddite.
The world inexorably will move to be truly globalized, with
shifts in population too and rules and laws governing all international
movements.
