Less-developed countries are given even more flexibility and benefit from accelerated implementation of market access concessions for their goods. The arguments for free trade vs. protected national economies has been with us since the very beginning of trade between tribes. Most economists agree that, at least in principle, free trade results in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. According to this widely-accepted theory, both countries are better off under free trade rules even if one country is better at everything. If America opens its textiles market to cheaper imports from Mexico, American textile workers lose jobs.
People seem comfortable believing that exporting is good, while importing is bad.
And we do the American hi-fi industry no good, because it will grow fat and happy in its protected market and will never develop into a viable competitor for Japanese manufacturers. In 1929, the United States passed the Smoot-Hawley Act, which drastically increased tariffs on imported goods, in the name of protecting American jobs. Many historians and economic theorists believe that the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler can be directly attributed to that one law. The principles of free trade may be hard to argue with, but the implementation of what we call free trade in the 1990s is another matter. The WTO, a whole new international entity with some of the powers of a government, is viewed with even more suspicion.