Yet another treehugger.com poll with not enough options.

How about:

I oppose free trade agreements because they hurt my nation's labor force

I oppose free trade agreements because transporting goods across large distances requires large amounts of energy and is not sustainable

Full disclosure: United Statesian...

The more coordinated a system, the less waste, provided it's coordinated by people who know what they're doing. Otherwise you get the stuff in the US like making large quantities of gigantic trucks that cause oil prices to go up. Gas prices would be more stable if we had instead coordinated our efforts to make reasonable cars. The same coordination argument goes across borders. There's nothing wrong with a free trade regime provided politicians make it totally subservient to values such as environmentalism and minimization of waste.

Or how about:

I oppose free trade because of the slave labor wages it enables corporations to pay

or

I oppose free trade because it is the first step in eliminating our borders and national identity

Where's Mexico fit in our trade plans? People seem to be upset about immigration. The best way to solve it is to help our southern neighbors improve their economy.

Some might say, "we're not in the business of boosting other countries economies?" Unless it's our [not so] neighbor and [not really] friend China.

Granted our boosting of China's economy wasn't exactly intentional, but do we have to be so eager to play along?

I support Free Trade because, in the long run, more peoples live improve than without it.

Free trade is marvelous!

While all the protesters have been complaining, taking down trade barriers and protectionism has been taking hundreds of millions (maybe over a billion by now) of people out of poverty, with downsides to only a few millions, mostly people already in rich countries.

Talk about getting things done!

Now we must work to fix the environmental side-effects, but it's not because something has downsides that we should ignore the upside (which is HUUUGE in this case).

Protectionism only creates more people, only benefits those who already have jobs against those who are unemployed. Trade is a win-win situation.

Free trade is actually helping Canada not being integrated by force. Maybe there would be a reason to do it if we had 30% trade barriers and such, but when things and people flow relatively freely, who cares?

I'd certainly like to see trade barriers on Japanese cars fall. I could get a prius about 20% cheaper.

"When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."
Frederic Bastiat

What about USA ditch the NAFTA so Canada and Mexico can sell oil and gaz to Asian country without having to "first serve" USA as stated in the NAFTA ?

opening NAFTA is not a good idea for the US citizens.

Better putting a huge tax on chinese importation.... oh, sorry, walmart will make sure this great idea never happen.

"Better putting a huge tax on chinese importation...."

Yeah, so that poor people in the US can face more inflationary pressure and even poorer people in China can lose their jobs?

Protectionism creates poor people. It only protects big corporations and national labor special interests.

Yes, it's better; more sustainable; more respectful and if we were in the developing world we'd appreciate it.
The people against it are the people who have most to gain by keeping others in poverty whilst they prosper ie the powerful supermarkets.

Let's be honest here - nafta, cafta (central american free trade agreement), pafta (peruvian free trade agreement), etc has nothing to do with improving the lot of people who live in developing nations. It has everything to do with allowing US corporations to exploit these countries for cheap labor, with the effect of bringing down wages in the US.

Instead of free trade, I support "fair trade." Let US corporations open plants in developing nations. But these corporations should also be required to pay wages comparable to those in the U.S., as well as allow those workers to unionize.

Every country should work together , we all live in the same planet , but in a way , protecting economy doesn't necessarily make things better with the mentality the population have today... it can be a bad thing , more money , more consumption . Our methods of fulfillment will surely drag us down!

We are the problem of earth and we all need to get together and change the way we live , practically and philosophically

For an accurate answer on the Free Trade problem , scientific knowledge should be used to calculate what would be best for the environment independently of nations sovereignty and economic ambitions , after all these are the state of affairs that rooted our environment distress .

Every country should work together , we all live in the same planet , but in a way , protecting economy doesn't necessarily make things better with the mentality the population have today... it can be a bad thing , more money , more consumption . Our methods of fulfillment will surely drag us down!

We are the problem of earth and we all need to get together and change the way we live , practically and philosophically

For an accurate answer on the Free Trade problem , scientific knowledge should be used to calculate what would be best for the environment independently of nations sovereignty and economic ambitions , after all these are the state of affairs that rooted our environment distress .

Fair trade and fair globalisation, not free trade and corporate globalisation.

For me as a Canadian, free trade is like.... say.... the electricity in your home. Worth having, but you need to be careful. Don't do anything stupid, like bypassing the circuit breaker or signing a free trade deal with a country with much lower wages and labor standards than your own. When a large volume of jobs head to China, it needs to trip a circuit breaker. Automatically. Without debate.

The Canada-US free trade deal was good. We have similar wages and labor standards. Canada has the resources - lumber, metals, hydro power etc. - and the US has the larger labor pool to turn it into finished goods. Jobs were created on both sides of the border.

(The US overrode NAFTA and slapped large tarrifs on Canadian softwood lumber, reducng the size of the Canadian lumber industry. This led to layoffs in the US. Blount alone shut down two factories in the US that made saw chain for the Canadian market.)

I'm not so happy about adding Mexico. At least (for Canada) it made *some* sense: We were getting too dependent on trade with the US, which would cause sovereignty problems. Mexico gave us another trading partner. But I'm more enthusiastic about our new free trade agreement with European Free Trade Association (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) for it's similar wages and labor standards.

The poll was obviously made for Americans only. Free trade does not exist: what we have now is "managed trade". From the experience of the softwood lumber "negotiations" where apparently America can ignore all rulings of the "joint" dispute settling boards, managed means managed for Amerlka only! NAFTA definitely needs renegotiating - Mulroney gave far too much away.

This poll is ridiculous and frankly this post borders on propaganda. What about the social and environmental detestations that are happing in other countries do to these free trade agreements. It is hardly environmentally friendly to to import everything from tens if not hundreds of thousands of miles away. After all us treehuggers are always saying "buy local." There are far more environmental downfalls than benefits that free trade agreements cause