Donald Trump stood in front of a pile of garbage this week. Wait, there's more. The presumptive Republican presidential candidate chose the unusual backdrop of a Pennsylvania recycling facility to deliver a speech entitled "Declaring America's Economic Independence." The speech was described in the U.S. media as his most complete economic policy statement to date.
His message was certainly straightforward: Free trade is bad and protectionism is good, because it will bring back manufacturing jobs to Middle America that have been lost to China and Mexico.
A similarly isolationist sentiment in the United Kingdom had resulted in the Brexit referendum result a few days earlier and sent the U.K. economy into a tailspin. Voters narrowly chose the option to abandon the European Union and its massive free-trade zone in order to declare their own sort of economic independence.
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Free trade, it seems, is getting a bad rap these days. From England to America, globalized economies are being blamed for all manner of ills, from poverty to social inequity to alcoholism.
The attacks are coming from both the left and the right. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who unsuccessfully challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, is a fierce critic of free trade.
In an op-ed for The New York Times published on Tuesday, he blamed free trade for the growing income inequality in the United States, and for social despair. "Frighteningly, millions of poorly educated Americans will have a shorter lifespan than the previous generation as they succumb to despair, drugs and alcohol," he wrote.
"Let's be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite."
Mr. Sanders' message is bizarrely conspiratorial, but at least he doesn't mix it with bigotry, as the right is doing. When combined with the xenophobic rhetoric of free trade's leading right-wing adversaries – people like Mr. Trump and U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who both scapegoat immigrants in general and Muslims in particular – the protectionist movement risks becoming the greatest threat to economic growth and stability in the world today.
Free trade needs to be defended from these attacks and these attackers, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Barack Obama and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto did in Ottawa this week. Meeting for a summit of the North American Free Trade Agreement partners, all three leaders reinforced the importance of the role of free trade in helping the global economy grow, and as a means of bringing nations closer together and less likely to engage in hostilities.
"The prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market, that's the wrong medicine," Mr. Obama said. "Our auto plants, for example, would shut down if we didn't have access to some parts in other parts of the world, so we would lose jobs and the amount of disruption involved would be enormous."
Additional isolationism of the Brexit type would be equally disastrous for Europe, a continent of warring neighbours that has had peace for 70 years, thanks in part to the development of the EU, with its common market and free movement of labour.
Too many British voters have forgotten how bad their economy was in the 1970s and 80s, when as many as three million people were unemployed. The forces wrecking the economy had nothing to do with free trade and everything to do with Britain's shrinking stature. Joining what was then called the European Economic Community helped expand the economy.
Canada, Mexico and the U.S. have similarly benefited from sharing a free-trade zone. Virtually every analysis of NAFTA concludes that the deal contributed to rapid growth and higher corporate profit margins. Mexico has done so well that more Mexicans are now returning to their homeland than are leaving for the U.S. and elsewhere, thanks to a stronger economy.
China, once an isolated nation, has developed a teeming middle class and is more engaged with the world. The transfer of manufacturing jobs to developing countries has helped bring the number of people living in abject poverty to its lowest point in history, according to the World Bank.
As well, the availability of cheap imported products, from clothes to cellphones to television sets, has reduced consumer costs.
Yes, there has been a human cost. Millions of well-paying manufacturing jobs have been exported from the U.S., Canada and Britain to places like China and Mexico. Not all of the people who lost those jobs have found equally well-paying work in the new economy, and wages have been stagnant.
Plus, there is a worrying growth in the wealth gap between the ultra-rich and rest of us. The system has flaws and imbalances; it is not perfect and needs improvement.
But the notion that free trade is the cause of all the social and economic ills of the world is bunk. It is a myth created by racist demagogues such as Mr. Trump and Mr. Farage, who seek power by exploiting the despair and anger of a struggling portion of society with fearmongering and class warfare.
Mr. Trump is himself a free trader, a businessman who outsources the manufacture of products that bear his name to China and other places. He has grown wealthy in the era of liberalized markets. If he truly wanted to help Americans who haven't done as well as he has, he would push for a higher minimum wage, endorse Obamacare, embrace immigration and develop new markets for American goods through trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Instead, he and his counterparts in Europe shout loudly that the solutions lie in suspicion, isolation, bigotry and trade warfare. Theirs is the path to even greater job loss and international hostility. It makes you wonder what their true goal is.