213 billion dollars represents no more than 0.7 per cent. Consumers are not just people who buy products, they are the same people who earn a living by working, and who pay taxes. As consumers they may be able to buy certain products more cheaply, although when Nike moved its manufacturing from the US to Asia, shoe prices did not drop. Instead profit margins rose. But the real cost to consumers of cheaper goods will be that they will lose their jobs, get paid less for their work and have to face higher taxes to cover the social cost of increased unemployment.
Consumers are also citizens, many of whom live in towns.
As unemployment rises and poverty increases, towns and cities will grow even more unstable. So the benefits of cheap imported product swill be heavily outweighed by the social and economic costs they bring with them. According to figures published by the US Department of Labor, since 1973 real hourly and weekly earnings, in inflation- adjusted dollars, have already dropped respectively by 13.4 per cent and 19.2 per cent, and that was before the most recent GATT negotiations known as the Uruguay Round. If 4 billion people enter the same world market for Labour and offer their work at a fraction of the price paid to people in the developed world, it is obvious that such a massive increase in supply will reduce the value of labour. Also, organized labour will lose practically all its negotiating power.