When politicians say 'free trade' it's really public theft

The article innocuously calls it upward redistribution but let's frame it accurately: Public theft.

"In the real world what passes for 'free trade' is pretty much any policy that redistributes income upward […] a central component of every trade deal for the last quarter-century, is a very costly form of protectionism. Needless to say, the beneficiaries of this protectionism tend to be in the high end of income distribution. […] The long and short in this story is that 'free trade,' as it appears in Washington policy debates, is pretty much whatever the rich and powerful want it to be. It has nothing to do with the economic concept of free trade; it is about redistributing more money from everyone else to them."