> The vast majority of third world workers benefit from free trade and freely choose the jobs it produces.
Source? Especially for the second statement.
They don't benefit from free trade, free trade is the reason why they are exploited and their countries kept in poverty. And how can you say that they freely choose their jobs if the only alternative they have to ridicolous wages and low safety jobs is to starve?
Third world workers don’t have to work for first world manufacturers like Apple, they can keep doing the jobs they already have.
The reason they don’t is their existing jobs are far worse, typically far more difficult and dangerous farm jobs.That’s why when Foxconn used to post new iPhone assembly jobs, Chinese would line up by thousands because an Apple assembly job is a ticket out of poverty.
So if first world manufacturers left, your reducing third world workers choices back to the lower paying, much worse work they had before.
Too lazy to Google but India used protectionism because it wanted to do its own thing after independence and keep the evil western corporation away. By the end of 1980's India was almost bankrupt and had to get loans from IMF one of the condition was to open up the economy. India's poverty rate started to fall down after the economy opened up.
Source? Especially for the second statement.
They don't benefit from free trade, free trade is the reason why they are exploited and their countries kept in poverty. And how can you say that they freely choose their jobs if the only alternative they have to ridicolous wages and low safety jobs is to starve?