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. From today's free trade point of view, life is little more than a series of commercial transactions. Any law or regulation which inhibits a corporation's ability to buy, make, or sell whatever it wants, wherever it wants, and in whatever way it wants, is an evil to be eliminated. Today's free traders call such laws and regulations non-tariff barriers to trade. They include laws that support local or domestic industries, laws that protect food safety, laws that protect the environment, laws that protect worker health and safety, laws that encourage development of locally-based companies, and laws that link the right of companies to invest, to social responsibilities where they invest.