Certainly it seems plausible that trade between the U.S.A. and Mexico might be problematic in a way that trade between the U.S.A. and Canada is not. But there

Certainly it seems plausible that trade between the U.S.A. and Mexico might be problematic in a way that trade between the U.S.A. and Canada is not. But there is another issue with international trade. What restrains the urge of the top 100 corporate elite to pay their labor as little as possible, and get laws (e.g. anti-union, no minimum wage, etc.) passed accordingly, is that each of those 100 wants the other 99 to pay THEIR employees well, because the employees of the other 99 are his customers. He doesn't want to pay his own employees well, but he will collude with the other 98 to make sure each of the others pays their employees well enough they can buy his car/suit/food/appliance/etc. But what if he can have the employees in another country, pay them pennies, and have his customers in this country? Or, if he's on the poor country side of things, what if he can just find rich customers in another country? Now he has no reason to worry about insuring that his peers' employees are paid well. They're no longer his customers. But wait, how will there still be wealthy customers in his country? There won't. But, no problem, we can loan them the money to buy my stuff. It works until it doesn't. But if your employees and your customers are drawn from the same pool, then your exploitative greed is checked by all your greedy peers' exploitative greed. This is why Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie were both in favor of higher wages for factory workers; it wasn't because they were nice guys. But, more recently, the manufacturing happens elsewhere. This removes one of the only checks on the power of wealthy elites to apply the screws to their employees (legally or otherwise).