The southern economy has already been pretty much killed off by this garbage. It's wonderful how you people have just suddenly awakened to the dangers of outsourcing when it's your ***'s that are been burned alive. Had you pursued fair trade deals 10 years ago, then this type of thing would certainly be less severe.
I do not understand what you are talking about. We had nothing to do with any "fair trade deals" and as far as I know outsourcing has never been the subject of any "free trade deals." Outsourcing is goin on throughout the country and negotiating "free trade deals" would have little effect on it. I imagine that it is having the same effect in the Atlanta, Research triangle and other southern high tech belts right now as it is does here.
As far has I know "trade deals" with foreign nations are negotiated by the federal government, not the city of New York.
As for the diversification of the business here in New York, the current situation really dates back to the Koch administration when they pushed out niche manufacturing and handed the city over to Wall street, the Rockefeller Center crowd (TV media) and, most importantly, the high end real estate people. Before there was always a balance between various interests, including small manufacturers and other small businesses. They essentially said "screw manufactuing, turn those factories into office space." To pay for the huge abatements people like Trump got, the smaller people had to pick up the slack and therefore they had to raise rental rates. The huge increase in state and local taxes, all the hidden fees and the support of the one largest civil services in the country (I think that NYC is something like the 4 or 5 largest employer in the nation.) put most everyone out of business except the big boys, and then they started to move because the crime reach third world levels and their people did not want to live here. Rudy turned the crime around but by then all the big boys had left. They might have come back but 911 put the Kabash on that idea. Now Wall street is moving too. I remember when NYC was a town of small and medium sized business, if you can believe that. Manhattan actually had poor and middle income people living in it back then. I had a aprtment on thrid Ave. for $300 a month. That appartment now goes for $5,000.00 a month, and I doubt that there are very many people in that building now that actually work for a living.
After Koch the idea was that the international Fortune 2000 would either need to have their world HQ here or at least their N. American HQ. I think that in the early 1950s all but 10 of the fortune 500 had their headquarters here. Now I think that it is something like 7 have there headquarters. here.
SO the real problem is an entrenched and corrupt urban Dem machine. Do not forget that the New Deal start in NYC and was one of its major beneficiaries.
It is hard to see how negotiating "trade agreements" would help in and of itself. Tell me, do you thing that "The South" negotiates trade agreements independently of the federal government? I did not realixe that we had such things as regional trade agreements with foriegn nations.