It's not the "inevitable transition to a more globalized world" that its supporters say it is; it's a blatant attempt by giant corporations to change the rules of the game so that they always come out on top.
If the media were really honest, it'd start calling it "corporate-managed trade."
And that's a really important point, because for over 200 years in this country we had a trade policy that actually reflected the domestic economic interests of the US and not just a handful of multinational corporations.
First laid out in Alexander Hamilton's famous 1791 Report on Manufactures, the idea behind this trade policy was simple: the ultimate source of wealth for all nations is for them to protect domestic industries through strong tariffs - and that those tariffs make goods produced by factories here at home cheaper than those made abroad.
That's what we did from the founding of the republic until the Reagan, Clinton and Bush years, and it's what we need to do now if we want to rebuild the middle class.
Through so-called free trade that's really corporate-managed trade, we're letting big business decide what's important for our economy, and it's destroying the lives of millions of hardworking Americans.
It's time to put this failed experiment with free trade to rest once and for all.
The next president needs to end the current free trade arrangement with China, pull out of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, and just say no to the TPP.
Then we need to once again do the same thing that Alexander Hamilton and George Washington did way back in 1791: come up with a trade policy that works for US interests instead of for multinational corporations.
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