These agreements are not the only cause, if everyone would have kept on buying locally produced products, the jobs would have remained. Problem is that we bought the cheaper products, making it impossible for companies producing locally to stay profitable. We want our cake and eat it too.

That doesn't really make sense. In no universe can you expect people to buy more expensive products. Government intervention (tarrifs, taxes, regulations, whatever) or some other measure is needed to protect local companies.

I don't think GP was implying we should expect it. But it's fair to point out that there's a certain hypocrisy in complaining about jobs being lost to overseas while simultaneously buying goods made offshore in preference to those made locally. Note that I certainly accept on average this has been a beneficial arrangement for both sides, but it's the unevenness of how the wealth has been spread around that strikes me as the real issue.

hypocrisy, perhaps, but a ready analogy might be the heroin addict who, lucid at the moment, pleads with you to send them to rehab.

Not an entirely honest appraisal of the dismantling of US manufacturing in the 80s.

Big corporations didn’t reluctantly close down factories, hat in hand, because people weren’t buying their products. They moved the manufacturing offshores and people kept buying the products they always have.

You can't blame the corporations, if they wouldn't have moved the manufacturing while the competition did, they wouldn't have been able to compete on price, and consumers would have bought the cheaper options.

Problem with this policy is that it will prevent poor countries from ever getting up the ladder. It also ignores the fact that many advanced human right respecting countries got there not without plundering less fortunate for generations.

The plundering argument doesn’t hold up. The empires of Europe were a net economic loss for their metropoles.

Source for that claim?

How is that a problem for the United States, for instance?

Do officeholders in the United States have any responsibility to people in foreign countries beyond that in ratified treaties?

Do we have any moral obligation to make restitution for our great-great-grandparents' crimes to the great-great-grandchildren of the victims? And what level of punishment is going too far?

You do not have to do shit. But you do not live in the vacuum and unless you take interests / complaints of the other parties into considerations sooner or later you would face problems. Karma.

Well given the policy of the US the last 70 years we’re boned if karma is coming for us.

Back to shrugging off the idea poor people on the other side of oceans are going to pick a fight with me specifically. I live in the middle; after rowing over the Pacific they’ll have to get through a lot of other people first.

Hey you should probably stop buying toxic technology and flying; would hate for the kids to karma your elder form.

Shit n hellfire; anyone making use of modern technology has little wiggle room to pontificate about why and how others are oblivious to reality of their choices.

We're not all in this together. If there are any problems that arise naturally, I'm not personally averse to working out something mutually beneficial.

But if that were a threat, then I'd like to see some other country make good on it.

Usual my dick is bigger. Nobody is going to attack you. Sleep well.

Not really. Trade with rich nations could certainly speed up the process but the bitter truth is we have no one but ourselves to blame for the rampant poverty and corruption. It's precisely this corrupt mentality and dependence that stops poor countries from becoming rich. There's a literal communist in the presidency of my country, a leftist party who's enjoyed power for decades by essentially keeping people poor so they'll be thankful for the handouts.

The US is wealthier than ever and unemployment is persistently low. My fairly simple analysis of those two facts leads me to believe it's not a lack of jobs, but inequality that drives the misery.