To get back to the original premise, it was Bill Clinton with Robert Rubin that pushed trade liberalization and free trade policy. After seeing who Hillary's economic advisers are, I don't see that this will change with a new Clinton administration. Under Hillary we will most likely see more outsourcing, high drug prices, and more shoddy, dangerous goods coming from China.
I take it you're against trade liberalization and free trade, then. If so, could you elaborate a bit on the alternatives? That is, which types of trade barriers would you like to see erected -- tariffs, regulation, subsidies, something else? --, who would you have erect them, and how would you go about avoiding international trade wars if they were erected?
I'm asking, 'cuz from where I'm at, you're barking up the wrong tree. The problem with the current international organization isn't that it's "too free" -- it's that the playing field isn't level, and that it doesn't factor in social and environmental costs.
So, for example, we have free capital markets. This makes it possible for capital-rich countries to cash in quickly anywhere in the world -- at the expense of creating an enormous amount of instability: when there's an opportunity, you get an enormous capital inflow; when there's a scare, the capital leaves as quickly as it arrived, leaving the country a shambles. (Cf. the 1997 Asian crash.)
Conversely, we have a heavily protected agricultural sector, which squeezes developing countries out of the market and even turns some of them into food importers. And let's not even talk about the labor market, which is pretty much completely walled-off between economic zones.
What I'd like to see is *more* globalization, not less -- but done differently than so far. For example:
* Kyoto/Bali with teeth. A climate treaty that sets up emissions targets for all adherents, divides up emissions targets of non-adherents between the adherents, institutes a carbon-trading market that rewards reforestation and preservation of forests (among other things), and enforces the targets through "carbon tariffs," equally on members and non-members of the treaty. The monies collected with the tariffs would then be spent among adherents on carbon sequestration and emissions reduction. We would need a global body to monitor the system, too. (The good news is this has been done before on a somewhat smaller scale -- we got rid of CFC's with a system very much like this.)
* Abolition of agricultural subsidies, with a possible exception made for small family farmers to preserve cultural values. For example, cap the subsidy at, say, $20,000 per farm -- enough to make a critical difference for the small family farmer, but small enough to effectively eliminate their current negative effects. This could be done gradually, and social programs might be needed to cushion the effects of the somewhat higher food prices on the poor. (The rise wouldn't be as big as you could think simply from the size of the subsidy, though, as imports from the developing world would replace the subsidized food from the developed world.)
* Abolition of corporate welfare, especially of the oil and extractive industries. Exxon is doing just fine without being subsidized by the state, IMO. Exceptions could be made to seed new industries -- but capitalizing small startups to give them a leg-up is a very different matter from funneling billions to the likes of Exxon-Mobil or Monsanto.
* Sensible controls on the capital market. Unlike hard goods, capital can be zapped around the world at the click of a button. This results in greater instability, not greater growth -- and, of course, makes it possible for illegal drug and arms dealers, terrorists, and dictators to easily hide their money. We need more transparency and something to slow down capital flows -- perhaps a "Tobin tax," or perhaps just adding a "throttle" that makes transferring billions of dollars slower than it is now. If the current system is like a shallow tray where capital sloshes around and causes all kinds of spills, we'd need to add something like a honeycomb structure that gets it to stay put a bit more.
* A redistribution of risk to where it belongs. Currently, the main function of institutions like the IMF, the World Bank -- and, incidentally, various quasi-governmental banks in the US -- is to protect creditors, not debtors. On the micro scale, a mortgage broker who knowingly or negligently sells a mortgage to a bad risk knows that he can walk away, with the taxpayer picking up the bill for an eventual default combined with a drop in the value of the house. On the macro scale, a Western lender knowingly or negligently lending a billion or two to a country known to be a bad risk can be confident that, when push comes to shove, the IMF will squeeze the money out of the debtor, even if it means selling off the debtor's means of production. Lenders must be made to carry more of the risk of their bad debts: the flip side of overborrowing is overlending, whether we're talking mortgages or national debt.
I could go on, but you get the picture. The problem isn't that we have more free trade: the problem is that the trade is unfair, benefiting corporate interests über alls, and rewarding asset-stripping, environmental degradation, predatory lending, and exploitation of labor.
Whew.