“Free trade is aimed at the optimal allocation of economic resources”
What do you think the purpose of government is? Is it achieve “optimal allocation of resources” or should it be “job opportunities” for Americans?
The optimal allocation could very well be shutting down all factories in the USA, relocating “the means of production” to low wage countries and shipping finished products back to the USA. That will maximum profits right? But is that what government should do?
Maybe in a republican form of government, the people can say, we don’t want our jobs sent overseas, we don’t want the “optimal allocation of resources”. We want localism instead of globalism.
Optimal allocation of resources produces the optimal employment. And “no” the role of government is not to create jobs. That Leftist claim should be changed to state the role of government is to get the hell out of the way allowing the economy to grow creating new jobs.
All that results from LACK of free trade not its result.