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<i>This</i> is why Americans don't like 'free-trade' deals

The maker of Ritz crackers close their iconic Northeast Philly plant while expanding in Mexico.

It was not that long ago that Mexico's ambassador to the United States gave a speech to a business group in Chicago -- crowing about what a huge success the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has been since its enactment in the mid-1990s.

Especially for Mexico.

One of his success stories involved a company called Mondelez, not a well-known name but the maker -- through a series of shake-outs in the food industry -- of some of the iconic brand names associated with Nabisco, like Ritz crackers. That company, he boasted, was spending some $600 million in the Mexican city of Nuevo Leon on what he called "the world's largest cookie production plant."

Meanwhile -- perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not -- Mondelez was just as busy disinvesting right here in Philadelphia, completing the shutdown of its plant on the far end of Northeast Philadelphia that for decades had filled the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods with the distinctive sweet, salty smell of Ritz crackers. That means the loss of 350 of that increasingly rare animal, the well-paying union manufacturing job here in the Workshop of the World. The move -- as reported by my Inquirer quasi-colleague Joseph N. DiStefano -- is bad news for other folks -- truck drivers, even the neighborhood barkeep -- who don't work for Mondelez but were part of its economic orbit.

Company officials say the production is headed to Virginia and New Jersey, but the job-losing Philadelphians are staring South of the Border:

But former Philadelphia employees like retired baker Tom Campeggio, of Horsham, say they suspect the company will eventually shift more U.S. production to a government-subsidized, largely-automated, multimillion-dollar facility in Monterey, Mexico, where workers earn less than the $24 an hour in pay and benefits the company contracted in Philadelphia. He's glad he was able to retire in 2013, after 43 years on the line, with his pension from the Bakery, Tobacco and Confectionary Workers union.

And yet the the insulated political elites and pundits in Washington are wondering why there's so much opposition to new, NAFTA-like trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership , or TPP -- a still-secret treaty that is all but certain to happen after Congress gave President Obama the authority to negotiate it, in a week where the public and the press was bedazzled by other issues such as falling Confederate flags and falling barriers to gay rights.

The hearty but outnumbered opposition to TPP -- mostly liberals like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, joined by a few skeptical conservatives -- said the treaty contains language that's far too beneficial to multinational corporations. A lot of citizens oppose these trade deals, too, but most average folks aren't dwelling so much on the fine print. Instead, they've watched the devastation of their neighborhoods or small textile towns and the outsourcing of millions of jobs and wonder if anyone in Washington gets the insanity of doing the same damn thing again and again.

It's President Obama's job to articulate why this time it's going to be better than it was with NAFTA. But in the middle of what the chattering classes have been hailing as his Best. Week. Ever -- he failed.

At least in the case of Mondelez, shifting a lot of production to Mexico will mean the difference between profit and lo...ha, ha, I can't believe you almost fell for that. In fact, as noted by DiStefano, the company actually made $3 billion in profit last year for investors like billionaire Nelson Peltz (couldn't they hire cheaper, Third World investors?...just a thought). And it did so while still paying those workers in Northeast Philly a salary they could actually live on.

Look, you're not going to erect a massive wall (sorry, Mr. Trump) to keep out products from Mexico and the Pacific Rim, and in a perfect world our leaders might negotiate deals that would improve the flow of goods while protecting jobs (not to mention the environment.) But they just don't.

It may be the role of the capitalist to maximize shareholder profits at the expense of any other consideration, but that's not the role of government. Elected officials ought to develop policies that benefit the millions of working people. Instead, something smells, and it's not the buttery aroma of crackers.