Free traders come up with a lot of reasons for why we should discriminate against American workers for the good of America. Every time their arguments self-immolate it's natural to assume that another talking point will take its place.
However there are some aspects of reality to which they have no answer.
Here are a few that I've tested in real life and found that even economics professors get left stuttering like Porky Pig.
1. Ask them about their absolute contempt for American workers. Ask them why they ignore the plight of America's poor in their relentless propagandizing about the poor in other nations. Ask them about our jobless and homeless Americans who want for a job.
2. You might also want to point out the fact that globalism sends more jobs out of the country than it brings in. Even a basic study of the non-oil trade deficit shows that. America is the world's largest market for manufacturing exports and American workers have little to no stake in that. China's market is growing and American workers are flatly
locked out of that market. Unless you're a chicken farmer, that is. Again, you can verify that by looking at the trade deficit: $245 billion in 2010 without factoring in oil imports. Free traders don't care about that.
They believe that discriminating against American workers is somehow good for American workers. But you won't get them to say it.
3. Free traders claim that tariffs will raise the price of goods domestically. Yet they get silent real fast when you point out that the dollar is inherently being devalued by offshoring - which means the cost of imports is doomed to rise anyway. (And in many cases they already are.) Free traders won't have anything to say to this...why? Because even the reserve banks know it's true:
http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/drecon/1999/9910.html
4. Not only are you already seeing this reality at the gas pump, but you will soon see it when you try to buy iPads - because workers in other nations are demanding higher wages. See, this is the death knell for globalism -
for globalism to work, other nations' workers must remain dirt poor. When that is no longer true then you must find another sucker nation to provide dirt cheap labor. What happens when we run out of sources for cheap labor?
Your prices go up, just like they would if we had tariffs. Free traders have nothing to say to that.
5. Free trade is inherently contributing to the national debt. Particularly, foreign-held debt, which no domestic budget cuts in the world can fix. Again, you are guaranteed silence on this from the free trader crowd. Why? Because it's pretty much a law of economics:
http://industryweek.com/articles/u-s-_free_trade_policy_causes_trade_deficits_federal_debt_25366.aspx?ShowAll=1
For those who think foreign-held debt isn't all that big a problem - ask Greece, they can tell you otherwise.
6. And finally, globalism inherently discriminates against American workers by almost completely blocking them from access to the job market, to the point of companies hiring low paid H1B/J1 workers to displace Americans in America. (Case in point:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/foreign-students-walk-off-hershey-factory-job-protest-214310205.html)
How militantly is globalism blocking Americans out of the job market? Here's one example.
Ever notice how the free traders are totally silent about all of this?
It's because American workers don't matter to the pro-globalists. Everyone else matters, but not Americans. After all, we need to lower our standard of living. Perhaps we should all be diving in dumpsters before we get those outsourced jobs back?
Oh, I forgot. Outsourcing American jobs somehow brings us new, better paying jobs. Yet the only jobs it has brought us is Wal Mart cashiers and checkers. Which at some point soon we will be automating. Where are all those high-paying jobs that offshoring was supposed to bring us? Or was the whole point that we should be made poorer to help the third world? Ah, doesn't matter. Free trade arguments have no answer for that.