In a time of rampant fraud perpetrated on the American people by their government and by corporations that effectively control much of government, the outstanding example of fraud is “free trade” in the “global economy.”

Unpaid-for wars that total trillions of dollars in ultimate cost, theft of pension and retirement funds, trillions more in bailouts (while CEOs raked in tens or hundreds of millions in pay, bonuses, and other perks), and the emptying out of American manufacturing to other countries, leaving scores of millions without work or working at poverty wages…these are just a few of the frauds that have brought catastrophe to American workers.

But what has to be the number one fraud perpetrated on the American people is the illusion of “free trade,” and one of the best examples of that fraud has to be what happened to Greenville, Michigan, a small manufacturing city of 8,000 population.

Former Democratic Michigan Governor, Jennifer Granholm, recently described her efforts and the efforts of most of Greenville’s leading citizens to keep Electrolux, owner of a refrigerator manufacturing plant, from leaving the city and the state.

Granholm, who served two terms as governor, has written a book, with her husband Daniel Mulhern, about her experience, titled, “A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Future.”

She described the fight to save the 2,700 refrigerator plant jobs in Greenville, including a meeting with a cross-section of Greenville citizens and the management of Electrolux. The company had announced the closing of the plant, which was the largest refrigerator factory in the country. Generations of Greenville residents had worked there.

They sat across the bargaining table with the company and quite literally had a pile of incentives to offer, and among them were an offer of 20 years of no taxes and even the building of a new factory. Granholm said the company managers left the room for a caucus and were gone about 17 minutes. When they came back, they acknowledged that what was offered was the most generous that they had ever seen, but, in the end, there was no way that the Greenville and Michigan offer could compete with one thing…that they could pay Mexican workers about $1.60 an hour to make the same refrigerator.

This scene had been played out over at least three decades, in hundreds of communities across America, where workers have simply been told that they would be on the unemployment rolls in a month or two. Each time, when that announcement was made, the workers began their long search for new jobs and, in all that time, those jobs have not been there. The workers were without incomes and their communities begin the inevitable decline, some near bankruptcy. Millions of workers are in this fix and the country is in deep economic trouble.

The reduction in the unemployment rate from 9.1 percent to 8.6 percent in the past week does not portend an upturn in the economy. Granholm said that, as governor, she did all the things that the conservative and right wing politicians and pundits have demanded for many years: shrink government, reduce the number of state workers, slash budgets, and cut taxes. None of this seems to have made a difference, she admitted. Yet, she continues to talk about the U.S. being “competitive in a global economy.”

It is irrational to think that American workers can be “competitive” in a so-called global economy, not when Mexican workers can make the same refrigerators as Greenville workers, for less than $2 an hour, but that’s not the worst disparity. In China, within the past two years, the average wage was 57 cents an hour. There are lots of millionaires in that Communist-capitalist nation and many affluent, so there must be a few hundred millions of workers there who are paid 15-20 cents an hour, to bring the average wage down to 57 cents.

The powers that be in the U.S. expect American workers to believe that we can “compete” with those kinds of wages in, perhaps, 50 countries where American corporations get the goods they sell. It hasn’t happened in 30 years and it’s not happening now. It will never happen. The differential between well-paying American jobs and the slave wages paid to workers in developing countries is profit and the only “competition” is to see how fast transnational corporations can fill their coffers.

The whole idea of “free trade” and the global economy has been a flim flam operation, perpetrated by transnational corporations, whatever their country of origin. It’s just that American corporations are at the forefront of the exploitation of the world’s workers. For workers, none of this “free trade” has provided any benefit, such as higher wages, housing, education, health care or any of the benefits of what would be considered a modestly high standard of living.

“Free trade” was touted as a “win-win” deal. Workers in all of the trading countries would benefit. They didn’t and they don’t. Then, who does benefit? As Deep Throat of the Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal advised the two newspaper reporters, “Follow the money.”

It’s no accident that the disparity in wealth is as great as it is in the U.S. (the greatest in about a century). Since American workers have been reduced to accepting low-wage service jobs as their main means of support, they may need two or three of them to survive. Corporations still pile up the money, a lot of which they spend manipulating the political process, so they don’t have to pay any taxes. And, as we have seen, they are bold enough to ask the government (taxpayers) for subsidies, tax breaks for their CEOs, and bailouts.

How is it that Americans have accepted this? They have been propagandized by every means available to Corporate America, and it has worked. There are advertising and public relations, from which there is no escape. They see it in their daily newspapers, in their magazines, and on television, which they watch for hours every day.

The propaganda is in their textbooks, in their institutions of education, from kindergarten to the university. It has been done in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the think tanks that are bought and paid for by the corporations and the rich, the “1 percent,” as the Occupy Wall Street movement would describe them.

Few workers, peasant farmers, or indigenous peoples benefit from “free trade” and certainly few American workers and farmers benefit from “free trade.” Free trade advocates are fond of saying of workers in developing countries that “at least they have jobs,” but usually, the pay is so low that they cannot live like human beings, even in a low-level economy. American workers are suffering the same fate and the prospect of their recovering the living standard of 50 years ago is not good. In fact, the idea that it is even possible is an illusion.

Globalization has made nations more interdependent, and among those nations, the common thread can no longer be “free trade,” because there really isn’t such a thing. It has been a fraud perpetrated on the people to enrich those who stand astride the “global economy.” Grabbing dwindling resources, starting with oil, cannot be the measure of success any longer. Rather, there will need to be more assistance to poor countries (without expecting anything in return), more cooperation among nations, and more recognition of the rights of human beings (see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the anniversary of which is celebrated this month).

“Free trade” is dangerous, it ignores the humanity of those it exploits, and it results in the degradation and destruction of the environment, which destruction is being accelerated by the transnational corporations that seek only to maximize profits. As Greenville’s experience, multiplied out to the hundreds of communities across the U.S., has shown, nations will not be able to survive the continuation of “free trade” policies, and that includes the United States of America.

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BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.