>The elites choose that trade policy because it is efficient (specialisation)
Idealist nonsense, offshoring of manufacturing capacity from highly developed countries with large union penetration to countries with lower labor costs and more lax worker protections has literally nothing to do with comparative advantage and everything to do with enabling ever more brutal exploitation of labor and higher profit margins
After WWII, it was imperative that the US support free trade, especially if it meant taking a loss- all of their allies had had their industrial bases bombed out. Pressing the advantage forever would have been churlish, shortsighted, and disastrous for anti-Communism. So we have this very necessary, but outdated, free trade at all costs intellectual superstructure that we're still stuck in. Probably in another 20 years we'll be out of that, when the last of the old guard retires.
Idealist nonsense, offshoring of manufacturing capacity from highly developed countries with large union penetration to countries with lower labor costs and more lax worker protections has literally nothing to do with comparative advantage and everything to do with enabling ever more brutal exploitation of labor and higher profit margins