Don’t Blame “Free Trade” for Losses of Sweet Jobs in Hershey, PA: Blame Sour Sugar Policy

As a campaign-season article by Max Deveson for the BBC pointed out, unionized workers in Hershey, Pennsylvania blame free trade for the potential relocation of hundreds of jobs from dear sweet Hershey to Mexico. Their claim is that trade deals like NAFTA make it impossible for American workers to compete with cheap foreign labor.

Now, I am no apologist for massive, complicated, rent-seeking alleged "free trade" deals like NAFTA. In fact, I am quite sympathetic to arguments made by Joseph Stiglitz in Fair Trade for All that when the West brokers so-called "free trade" deals, they deliberately slant the global table to make things better for themselves, under the guise of helping the global poor. …

… But the BBC article overlooks something very important. …