They are no longer “American companies” except insomuch as they kiss government behind because it’s cheaper. But they are multi-nationals, and so they push for THEIR OWN FREEDOM to freely do business everywhere.
The government is not the people. With NAFTA almost all Americans are worse off. The politicians and their buddies got theirs, and the biggest “companies” were “free” to move production south of the border and still sell north of the border.
It may still stabilize further on, but the fact remains that with this agreement between our rulers (we weren’t invited to know, discuss or approve the secret thousands of pages), they (our rulers) have expanded their base of power among themselves AT OUR EXPENSE at that includes the poorest Mexicans.
Mexicans won’t be much better off in the end, these are “poverty sharing agreements” in fact. Our poverty, their benefit.
So, Again, WHAT “free trade”? WHERE is that? Within those zones, the political structures are still in place. Agreements between the rulers in governments leave the rulers in power, their buddies better off, and the agreements are rigged in secret and run tens of thousands of pages to
(1) obfuscate their true purposes, for which legalese is added, and (2) regionalize the power of current ruling groups over larger geographic zones and (3) set up another level of centralized power above us. Also, (4) in the minutiae, they’re setting up for a world government dictatorship.
On point #4, note that when you ask about every one of those “free trade zones”, they are set up with agreements among those rulers.
Also, because there are other factors that mitigate against the “free trade” effects. Currency is one, central banks another, the dominance of the dollar, the petro-dollar regime set up between Nixon and the petroleum exporting countries.
Regulations by one government against its internal victims, for example, are a way of crippling their own. The Trojan horse “environmentalist” trick “carbon” laws, for example, are meant to cripple the economies (small business especially) of the West, and help other countries’ economies. That way they get (they say) moral cover for more mass extortion.
