Fuel-Intensive "Free Trade"

This morning's NYTimes has some sobering cold-water-to-the-face for those progressives who have sold out to the trickle-down concept of "free" trade, which looks like a relic-in-waiting:

Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.

"Free" trade apologists rely on oversimple arguments about "sharing American wealth" with people of other countries, and they seem to plug their ears to opposing sides that say that wealth doesn't get shared with anyone but the sliver of the global population that controls the marketplace.  Now they have to deal with the brutal realities of supply and demand rather than dishing naive ideas about "sharing" in a world where little has usually been shared with the lower rungs of the class pecking order.

As bad as globalization has been for lower-rung American workers, it is going to get worse for cents-on-the-dollar-wage workers in other countries as unfettered corporates abandon them to move closer to home to save on fuel costs.  Assuming that we haven't passed an eco-tipping point, that may help the environment, but not the international labor force.  The rocking motion of "free" trade divides and conquers work forces worldwide while keeping them reeling and pacified.  Likewise, the political left will be both placated by the lowered environmental risk and torn on the ramifications for labor.