PARIS — “Free trade” have become dirty words in the United States and much of Europe, seen as the source of a host of ills traced to the globalized marketplace, from the loss of manufacturing jobs to the rise of immigration to the threat of dubious food imports.
Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee for president, gives these themes their most virulent spin when he accuses China of “raping” the United States, or threatens to build a wall on the Mexican border. In the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders has pilloried Hillary Clinton for her support of past trade treaties.
In Europe, particularly in Germany and France, the campaign against a proposed free trade treaty between the United States and the European Union has taken to the streets, as protesters raise the specter of American chlorine-washed chicken, and hormone-fed beef invading their supermarkets.
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