you mentioned "obey the law" several times.
U.S. "free-trade" agreements with 3rd-world-like countries are a way for U.S. business to subvert U.S. labor and environmental laws. it is not an even playing field.
even w/o free trade agreements the cheap labor and lack of laws to "obey" make places like China so agreeable to U.S. businesses.
i have nothing against walmart, big businesses, or the upper class but i can still see the obvious. if all of the products walmart sold had to be manufactured (etc.) in accordance with U.S. laws and regulations there would be no walmart.
An interesting point. Not all nations have the same laws and, to the extent that free trade allows U.S. companies to outsource the production of goods to companies with looser or non-existent laws, free trade policies allow U.S. companies to skirt around restrictive U.S. laws.
If your point is that the U.S. should pay closer attention to the labor and environmental laws of the companies with whom it develops free trade agreements, I think you're right. We shouldn't subsidize human exploitation or environmental recklessness through trade.
But, on the other hand, we can't require every country in the world to match the U.S. law-for-law and restriction-for-restriction.
If U.S. companies were able to hire U.S. residents at fifty cents an hour it would be a travesty. That's why the Fair Labor Standards Act imposes a minimum wage.
In Bangladesh, however, 50 cents an hour is a princely sum and the population there is happy to work in a U.S.-owned factory for that rate. Encouraging trade to developing companies with lower rates is a good thing, not exploitation.
Does it sometimes hurt U.S. workers when jobs move overseas? Sometimes, but in the long run the U.S. is better off even if some individual U.S. workers are harmed.
The $10 radio you buy in Wal-Mart (because it was manufactured in Bangladesh by the $0.50/hour worker) would cost $100 if it was manufactured in Ames, Iowa by U.S. workers making the minimum wage. The factory workers in Ames may lose some wages as they re-train for other jobs elsewhere, but in the mean time everyone in American who buys the $10 Wal-Mart radio saves $90 on the purchase.