It brings the standard of living up in export countries, lower costs in import countries, and stimulates other countries to get into the act.
Not all industries are viable long term. Just like milk delivery faded in many areas so will some textile jobs. There are plenty of examples of widgets being made in the US alone from companies very young. It all comes down to this, do you look only for the negative?
I do know one thing is true. Any candidate campaigning on trade sanctions or the like is a loser and will make us losers too
Yeah, just look at Trump trail in the polls.
At this point it's not economy, it's religion.
We've seen talks about CO2 emissions and the resistance of Asian countries against agreeing to a framework that puts the same restrictions in place for them as for the west. They clearly understand that a comparative lack of emission controls puts them at a competitive advantage.
Wage arbitrage is absolutely also a factor and the western world's working class absolutely have reason to resist that because they will not come out better off in that exchange.
The developed countries should be disproportionately paying the cost of pollution as they caused it in the first place.
I totally understand we need to stop, but it's a lot more complicated than you're presenting.
If you mean that Asian countries want a "growth spurt" by encouraging western corporations to build facilities where they can ignore modern pollution controls, then we are in agreement. But it's a beggar-thy-neighbor policy and one that hurts our entire planet and is abetted by free-trade agreements.
And has that increased the rate of new businesses being founded, decreased the price of borrowing for existing businesses, or been poured into rent-seeking asset bubbles in markets like real-estate?