While structural adjustment programs create labor market and other economic conditions favorable to the transnational corporations, today's free trade agreements create a global legal system that puts these corporations' interests above the rights of citizens.
Free trade is a very old concept, dating back to the beginnings of capitalist economic theory.
But the classical views of free trade are quite different from what today's free traders advocate. Today's global economy is another world entirely. Free trade advocates of yesteryear were concerned almost exclusively with reducing tariffs. Tariffs are taxes that a nation imposes on imports from other countries. Their purpose is to raise the cost of the imported product in order to protect domestic companies producing similar products.