While working conditions may not have been ideal, the factory provided income that kept the region from falling into poverty and despair. One wonders how many of the Seattle and Quebec protesters have actually been to the areas where the people they purport to help live. Yet taking consumer power into account makes a far more compelling case for it. While free trade may make consumers complicit by their patronage of abusive regimes or companies, it also gives them market leverage for reform should their sense of moral outrage be stretched too far. More recently, the outcry over seeing Chinese goods on the shelves may have had some influence on China's decision to release the crew of the spy plane.
Consumers are on the front lines in the struggle for prosperity with justice.
Worse, the appeals panel hearings are closed to the news media and the public. You have long advocated openness in American court proceedings.