Opinion
Cost of US 'free' trade: collapse of two centuries of broadly shared prosperity
A reckless free-trade policy is destroying America's jobs machine. We must return to a policy of strategic, not unconditional, economic openness.

By Ian Fletcher / April 1, 2011

San Francisco
It’s time to face a brutal truth about the American economy: Even if rising gas and food prices don’t hasten a double-dip recession, our 200-year tradition of broadly shared prosperity is over.

That’s because the great American job machine has been destroyed by a reckless free-trade policy.

Since the end of the cold war, and accelerating after NAFTA in 1994, Washington has pursued a globalized economy made possible by ever-expanding “freeâ€