Sorry, but looked at from Southern Africa, free trade is a loser. Even the OECD and WB study in '93 announced that our region would lose billions a year thanks to the Uruguay Round. I don't have stats handy but I'm sure it's worse than they thought. Our manufacturing sector in SA alone has been shedding tens of thousands of jobs a year; after trade liberalisation Zimbabwe's manufacturing crashed (from 1991-95) by 40% in volume terms. Even the areas we were meant to have a comparative advantage, including clothing & textiles, are bombing.
> *Sigh*
>
> There was a time when opening up the U.S. market to imports from poor
> countries--so that Bengali peasants could move from very, very low-paid
> farmworker jobs to low-paid textile-operative jos--was a left-wing cause in
> America.