Free trade dogma insists that everyone benefits from it in the long run, but history does not agree. In history there are winners and there are losers. Protectionism creates winners (pre 1870 England, Wilhelmine Germany, pre 1945 America, China, India, and Japan) and free trade creates losers (Spain, Holland, post 1900 England, post 1970 America).
Free trade, like Marxism, is a textbook theory that just plain does not work in the real world because nations are no more altruistic than people. When pushed to extremes it creates economic distortions that benefit people who live off of investments at the direct expense of people who live off of paychecks as the economy stops making things.
"(.....pre 1945 America, China, India, and Japan)"
You're kidding right? The great depression, slave wages, 3rd world lifestyles and getting a nuclear bomb dropped on you is what you would consider "benefits"? For some dumb reason, I would prefer to live with the trade policies of post 1970 America, and live in the resulting environment, than live in China, India or any other protectionist country.
Well Put Sam......
Are there any examples where (legal) free trade has proved to be a benefit for a reasonably well off country or area? I keep thinking about Hong Kong as perhaps one such example, but if memory serves, I believe that Hong Kong has also depended on a very large underclass from the PRC for a lot of its wealth creation. This I believe violates my condition that the country be reasonably well off; utilizing such a very large underclass would seem to eliminate even Hong Kong.