In the New York Times, Nicolas Kristoff points out that American protectionism does more than simply hurt America’s economy by denying access in our market to cheaper goods it also helps keep people poor and hungry in other countries by denying them access to our market

Even if that access is through a sweatshop

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about �labor standards,� I�d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It�s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don�t exploit enough.

The problem here is how few people realize that economies are evolutionary in nature.  Meaning that you cannot take an economy still stuck in its agrarian, or in some sad cases hunter and gatherer, stage and force it to become a modern economy like ours.  The economy must evolve first, and go through all the same steps our economy went through before it arrived where it is today

There was a time when the American economy was heavily dependent on sweatshop factories, but that time has come and gone.  Our free market economy allowed us to move beyond the point at which the best jobs that were available were in the middle of some noisy factory stamping out the proverbial widgets.  Other countries have not moved past that point, but they will as long as their is free trade

But if we Americans refuse to trade with them out of some misguided opposition to sweatshops, they’ll never evolve

I’m not in favor of seeing workers exploited.  But I’m also not in favor of denying people the option of working in a sweatshop when the only alternative for them could be finding sustenance by sifting through massive piles of garbage

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