We are "teaching a poor man to fish" in our own fishery. It only makes sense to do it if we can protect our own interests.
To say that "increased demand ups the stock market, and that's better for all of us" is an assumption that we all have the capability of being involved in the stock market, which is not only just pure baloney but it leaves republicans vulnerable to the charge that they lack compassion. A lack of compassion is one of the things I have noticed in the debates on this topic so far. I doubt anyone who has been through such a restructuring of their own industry would be missing that compassion gene.
The WTO and other treaties we support have made any argument that "when jobs go abroad, America loses" antiquated. While 1000s of US jobs have been outsourced abroad, 1000s of new manufacturing jobs have been created in the US by foreign companies like Honda, Toyota and Mercedes.
The scary thing is that so many IT jobs have gone abroad because of the Internet, but this is the world we bargained for when we started taking down trade barriers, and I would say that now no President of party can turn the tide. You cannot prevent computer programers in India working for US companies via the Net, if you want to keep the Internet as a global, public domain information "highway". We have to take the good and the bad.
So we (the developed nations) are gradually (and painfully) expanding the world fishery, if you will.
We are ALL involved in some way in the stock and bond markets, everyone benefits when it performs well. Corporations are publically owned, and every shareholder (no, they're not just rich guys in nice suits on Wall Street), employee and all of the businesses they patronize, every retirement account and pension fund benefits. This also creates more venture capital to start more businesses and create more jobs.
We're global and we are all connected. There is no honest way to make an argument for rolling back the tax breaks and trade agreements, for good or bad, we are part of the changes going on and no one can stop it.
And, no I cannot relate to someone who has been down-sized, but we cannot stop what we started a long time ago.
I feel that less govt intervention in business and lower taxes would allow us to reap the benefits from free trade. How much more "compassionate" can we be?