So do you think tariffs and duties, to the extent they are high, help America to the extent that they are high?
Do you believe if Europe or Mexico subsidizes their industries, we should subsidize our own?
What I'm trying to understand is whether it is the details of NAFTA you don't like, or if you're against freedom of trade in principle-- if, no matter how simple NAFTA was, you would still be against it.
Free trade helps all countries, including the United States. The United States is by far the world's biggest exporter of services, just as the United States is by far the leading exporter of goods, becuase the United States is a hoss. In a country this size, with the kinds of fundamentals we have, in this kind of economy, with the virtually full employment we have, the United States is the last country that should be afraid "exporting good jobs".
You quoted C.S. Lewis. Like Hayek, C.S. Lewis believed as Kant did that human beings were ends in themeselves, not mere means to an end. C.S. Lewis decried the Malthusian view that human economic life in its totality must be zero-sum. He noted that this true only when we don't live by God's rules with respect to one another. In other words, theft does result in zero-sum games, while games which involve freely giving do not. That's why, at the end of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is a table which continually reproduces food-- Lewis saw this non-zero-sum nature as a miracle that could not be explained in crude metaphysical materialist terms. In this way he echoed Jonathan Swift and foresaw the insights of Julian Simon.
We are already subsidizing Mexico, directly. We subsidzie that country again through the illegals who send money into their country, which equals their GDP, I believe, 20% is the the figure I last saw.
The problem with "free trade" is that human beings are prone to do what's best for themselves and do not operate out of doing what's best or right for others, in the here and now, or in the long term. True free trade would require that the governments would live up to the goals set. If a country is corrupt, only a fool would believe it would become less corrupt as more and more money is funneled into its own economy.
The free market should be the preferred method of trade; I dislike striking "deals" with the devil.