Because our brand of “free trade” has led to unfair trade.
That unfair trade has lead to very, very, very high unemployment and mind numbing deficits, or haven’t you heard?
Those deficits are so huge that just the interest payments on our deficits takes massive funding, funding that could have been used for the good things mentioned above.
For an example of the destruction wrought by people thinking things like: “In the long run, we’re all better off buying the thing we want most at the best price, regardless of who produced it”
The Gov. spent $412 billion of our tax dollars last year just to service interest on our debt. Again, that’s just interest! California needs $20 odd billion to meet its budget. So, just 5% of what we paid in interest could have been used to keep CA from needing to make drastic cuts in the good stuff I mentioned.
Give us some recent examples of economist saying that free trade has increased our wealth. Sure economists say all sorts of things. Most argued against the presence of a housing bubble for years.
As of now, what I see is them admitting NAFTA was a huge negative blow to American workers. I also read every week more saying that the good jobs we’ve lost recently, especially in manufacturing, won’t be coming back.