Free trade hurts the world's poor  Free trade creates demand for extremely cheap products produced by poor people in terrible conditions in third world countries. In Indonesia, there are people working in sweatshops for 60 cents an hour1. It is estimated that there are 158 million child workers around the world2. Free trade creates demand for the products produced by this modern day form of child and adult slavery. The governments of the countries where this takes place do nothing to improve the working conditions. Sweatshops are produced by free trade and demand for cheap goods, and the way that workers are treated is inherently wrong. Therefore free trade is not a force for global betterment, but instead hurts the cause of the poor and their standard of living.  1 Krugman, Paul (1997), "In Praise of Cheap Labor", Slate.com,  2 UNICEF, "Child Labor",