The original idea was to lower trade barriers so that companies could build additional factories overseas where the items produced at those factories--yes, at a lower cost--could be then sold at a lower cost in the area where those factories were located. Heinz followed this idea and does today.
What the corporate fat cats did was shut all the factories in the US, make their stuff more cheaply overseas with near slave labor, and then sell the crap at the same price they would have sold it for had it been made in the US with well paid union labor. See: Nike shoes.
The big bosses looted the difference and pocketed it, the main reason for the ridiculous increase in executive pay packages. The stockholders didn't do much better and their former employees were left scrambling to find a patchwork of service jobs that paid too little to live on in order to survive and too little to buy what they used to make.
This is why greed was the problem, why 400 men now hold more wealth than the bottom 90% of us do, and why this country's economy is in the toilet.
Nobody begrudges those foreign workers the chance to build things, the companies to sell them, and everyone to make a living offshore. What created the disaster was throwing Americans out of work just so a few hogs at the top could get fatter.
This is what your niece needs to know, although she also needs to know she has to parrot Freeper nonsense to pass the course.
Because we can't sue teachers for malpractice.
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