Large corporations are largely country-less these days, they can move expand operations in one country while closing down operations in another country. There is no anchor like existed during the early centuries of the USA and countries like England where business owners lived in the communities that their companies operated in and were part of the communities, being neighbors of the people that worked for them.
Dynamics started to change with the wise of people like Rockefeller, JP Morgan, et al. Those people created companies that spanned many communities, and all industrialized countries, changing the relationship between workers and owners, owners became completely detached from workers. Owners started to engage in a race with each other to determine who could create the most personal wealth. Trade became a means of increasing profits and controlling the cost of manufacturing. Manufacturing was moved from high wage countries to poor, low wage countries and the resulting products sold back into wealthy countries. Financial institutions were not impacted by manufacturing moving to poor countries and worked to help owners move manufacturing.
Fast forward to today. Owners, which is now a mix of wealthy families, retirement plans, investment banks continue to seek out the cheapest countries to manufacture in, pitting one country against other countries, extracting "concessions" from governments and workers along the way.
There is no such thing as free trade because owners or investment banks will find "soft" spots that they can exploit, sacrificing countries that don't have protective laws to protect their citizens. The USA and England are the last two countries that don't put up protective tariffs unless it is proven that countries are taking advantage of trade rules.
So, any trade agreement will be bad for US citizens, because the people at the table making the rules of trade are owners and investment banks, not workers or their greatly weakened unions.
One of the fundamental realities that owners and international investment banks take advantage of is that why should a person in China, Vietnam, Singapore accept that their standard of living will be restrained so that workers in America and Great Britain can maintain a high standard of living? So, workers around the world get sucked into a constant vortex of increasing competition to hold or retain jobs, with lower and lower wages being the carrot that owners and international investment banks use to play workers in countries against each other.
The situation won't change until new systems of owners dealing with workers is developed. In that system, owners will share wealth created with workers and investment banks will be cut out of the picture. Owners in such a system will be visionary and progressive in their views on their role in a larger society. Until such a system is created, nothing will stop the constant degradation of workers. The issue of workers in each nation having a constantly rising standard of living will still exist, but that can be dealt with via real trade agreements where standards on treatment of workers and the environment are equal from nation to nation and where companies largely are national, operating within their own national and/or regional borders.
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We should gain some jobs, but they will be robotic jobs, not people jobs? Okay, you've convinced me. Say no more.
