What is this Free International Trade spoken of so reverently?

It isn't what it's sold to be to the rubes:

Many people around the world understand that our modern era of globalisation is one in which international trade is between countries...

The reality of international commerce paints a vastly different picture, however. Giant multinational corporations dominate the area of international exchange and a very large share of world ‘trade’ is actually between branches of these same corporations. In North America trade associated with U.S. parent multinationals or their foreign affiliates accounted for 54 percent of U.S. exports of goods and 36 percent of imports.[.pdf ] Forty percent of trade between the US and Canada in 1998 was intra-corporate.[.pdf]. “Forty percent of the US-Europe trade is between parent firms and their affiliates, and in respect of Japan and Europe, it is 55 per cent; with regard to US-Japan trade, it is 80 %.”[.pdf ]

This intra-corporate form of trade appears to be increasing at a rapid rate. In 2005 “U.S. imports between U.S. MNCs and others increased 13.5 percent, and imports between U.S. parents and foreign affiliates increased 8.6 percent.”[.pdf]...

So basically all this Chicago school reverence of Free Trade and agreements like NAFTA is worship of a principle that's being used to essentially allow the mega-corps to shuffle around bucks, merchandise, and labor internally without having to worry about things like tariffs and taxes. It isn't capitalism. It's exploitation.

[tip o' teh tinfoil to Avedon again]