I was tear-gassed protesting free trade. Can I now say, “I told you so”?

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. We were right. We said jobs would go to low cost countries, hollowing out Canadian manufacturing. They did. The rich got richer and everyone else got poorer. And now resurgent populism.

I guess the question is what we need to do next.

I always liked the idea of globalizing rights: free trade with countries that have similar labour and environmental standards. Maybe that's the next move? Or are we back to bespoke tariffs on everyone?

I think realistically the best case scenario is bespoke tariffs plus resurgence in union density and militancy. Our own labor standards are too low for sustainability at this point so teaming up with other countries with similar standards would still not solve the issue at home. We're still on an uptrend when it comes to inequality and we know it leads to instability at some threshold. We need to significantly curb the amount of money/wealth going to the top and instead direct it to the working class.
- The only way to curb wealth going to the top is taxes on their wealth/income... Tariffs help with labour outsourcing, but not with wealth inequality...
  I suppose a guillotine would help with wealth inequality as well though....
- Random tariffs seems the most likely.
  I'm not sure that I agree with the labour standards thing. We may be lacking in some areas, but I expect we're better than the global south, and China's 996.
  We need to significantly curb the amount of money/wealth going to the top and instead direct it to the working class.
  I definitely agree with that. Wasn't there some global tax treaty that recently fizzled out?

Isn't it the opposite? Free trade has ended like you wanted, but it didn't make things better

I don’t get this article, is it assuming that everyone thought globalization was a good thing?

I’m pretty sure what happened was politicians just did it and gaslit everyone saying it will be good for the economy.

is it assuming that everyone thought globalization was a good thing?
Yes. And many did. The 1988 election was mostly about free trade with the US, which the pro-free trade party won. The general assumption was that some people would lose their jobs, but prices would go down.
And that's what happened. But it turns out that lots of people lost their jobs, and certain sectors shrank dramatically.
- But we got more coffee shoplocations.
  Oh shit most of those are now staffed by TFWs. ⚰️
Globalization IS a good thing. Many people didn't like globalization and free trade because while being a huge productivity boost overall it was also a large wealth transfer to many of the poorest nations on Earth. And they used this math to make some very convincing arguments that we were "falling behind" and "living standards were declining" and maybe in some cases the speed of that wealth transfer did go too far. But mostly what was really happening was simply that other countries were catching up and this is not a bad thing unless you consider those people sub-human.
I don't consider people in other countries sub-human so I think our goal should be to make the entire world a nice and equitable place to live for everybody, because having a nice world that everyone can live in benefits us personally and the rising tide will lift all boats and we can finally start to put all this horror and war and injustice behind us and try to focus on things that actually improve our civilization together. This is not a zero sum game, we do not have to steal from the very poor to make our own poor richer, we can gradually fix the historical inequality to bring everybody up to the same level without causing too much stress to ourselves if we just adjust our expectations a little and frame it in the right way.
The thing that was actually bad about free trade was that some very non-democratic, non-free countries abused it, monopolized manufacturing of entire industries and bribed us with very cheap products about it so we didn't mind very much. We let our enemies, actual enemies who abuse their own populations and want to destroy us and take everything in the world for themselves and abuse us too, use it against us. It's not free trade that's bad, it's the tyrants running these evil despotic regimes that we are too lazy and peaceful to do anything about. They lied to us and pretended that they were being reasonably democratic and we knew they were sort of lying but we gave them a passing grade anyway and let them carry on. Nobody minds that they torture their own people or work them to death when they're importing their nice cheap goods at a great price.
It seems like we hoped that if we provided them a good economy, freedom would follow. But that's putting the cart before the horse. Freedom must come first, then economy can follow. By tolerating evil, by letting free trade support and provide for that evil, we allowed that evil to infect us and now we're feeling the pain of what evil left unchecked will do to the world.
So now it's time to prepare for a war to defeat evil once again, because we let it happen.
- thing that was actually bad about free trade was that some very non-democratic, non-free countries abused it, monopolized manufacturing of entire industries and bribed us with very cheap products about it so we didn’t mind very much ... It seems like we hoped that if we provided them a good economy, freedom would follow.
  That's what we were protesting. It was clear that production would move to overseas sweatshops. We pushed the idea of fair trade: where countries would lower tariffs on trade partners that enforced similar labour and environmental laws. The intent was that we wouldn't externalize shitty labour practices, instead, workers in those market would join a middle class similar to Canada's.
- Globalization IS a good thing.
  Nope. If something can be produced locally, you would pay less transportation costs.
  By definition, it’s less work to access goods and services that are closer, unless your country can’t produce it, then you outsource.
- Sweatshop labor is a gift, says standard libertarian take. All those bottom-of-the-barrel economies are doin' fucking great.

"... now the electrical grid's collapsed, there's no coal-gas infrastructure for lighting! I warned you electricity was bad! I told you so!"

The problem right now is not what we were doing, last month.

Globalism is based. Free trade is based.

Yeah, I have a feeling national security and a possible fascist takeover of the US wasn't their main bone to pick.
- The argument seems to be "I think free trade is bad. It led to a shitload of prosperity for everyone involved, but now that people are projecting their personal grievances onto free trade and undermining it by electing an isolationist nationalist, things are going to get worse. Told ya so." Feels like hella cope to me lol.