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.
There are working conditions so bad in certain countries that some people's initial reaction is to support a ban on products from those places. Many people also think it wise to demand certain standards on wages, environmental protection and worker health and safety.
This thinking is hard to argue with until one remembers just how bad working conditions were in the U.S, at one time, and the damage that was done to our environment during our rapid industrialization.
If we had insisted on these same standards for our own economy while we were becoming affluent we never would have made it.
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.
Agreed. Insisting on additional regulations in other countries, under threat of tariffs or other sanctions, that improve wages, working conditions or the environment will deliver the undesirable effect of eliminating many of those jobs.
Denying a country the ability to take advantage of their poverty, when that's what they have the greatest supply of, would be unfortunate and is no way to develop future markets for our products and services.
Encouraging trade to developing [countries] with lower rates is a good thing, not exploitation.
Too many people see low wages as exploitative but can never answer why it isn't better for a man to take the work available to him and provide the basics for survival than it is not have work at all and starve.