For decades, the United States provided a market that was unlimited for most exporters, enabling countries large and small to transfer their populations from marginally productive farms in overcrowded villages to low-tech industries producing garments, footwear, simple hand-tools and such like. In that first stage of one-sided market opening, poor people worldwide became less poor, while working-class Americans started to lose their jobs — and the American ruling elite in both parties remained uncritically devoted to free trade.
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