Dan Shoom Kingston IS Five Part Series on NAFTA

Part 5
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If NAFTA really were just about trade there would be no basis for
socialists taking a side. Supporting free trade would mean
supporting the rights of business to operate anywhere without
facing obstacles that are often the result of the struggles or
workers, indigenous people, women, and many other oppressed groups.
Laws regulating environmental standards, requiring pay equity,
union rights, as well as social programs like unemployment
insurance or Medicare are often seen by multinational corporations
as barriers to trade and investment.

Protectionism means supporting businesses in your own country at
the expense of those from another. Supporting protectionism leads
workers to see the source of their problems as stemming from the
workers and businesses from somewhere else rather than from the
ruling classes of their own country. For example American trade
policies around NAFTA and Japan have coincided with an increase of
Japan-bashing, and anti-immigrant sentiment about Mexican
immigrants.

Being for either free trade or protectionism means supporting one
or another section of business. Workers are strongest, however,
when solidarity with other workers is greatest. Canadian and
American workers can do more to improve their living standards by
supporting the struggles of workers in places like Mexico, South
Africa, and the Philippines who are fighting for basic union
rights, human rights, and decent wages. If workers were organized
everywhere our bosses could not force us to make concessions by
threatening to relocate to where wages are lower and workers more
docile.