why the 'free trade' agenda is losing steam:
Real wages - adjusted for inflation -- for the more than 100 million people that make up most of our labor force were just ten percent higher in 2006 than they were in 1973. This is a revolutionary upward redistribution of income, vastly different from the prior 25 years, when real wages increased by 74 percent. How much of this redistribution is due to trade, or more broadly, the "globalization" that includes the movement of production to countries with low wages, repressed labor, and weak environmental regulation?

The conventional wisdom is that there are huge gains from trade, but since benefits are not so visible and are dispersed among many consumers, "protectionists" who might lose jobs prevail against the public interest. The reality is the opposite: the losses are dispersed among the majority of workers through lower wages. The gains are concentrated among the big corporations who own our Congress and lobby for "free trade."