Who supports free trade?

I submitted the following letter to the NYT in response to this letter from Senator Sherrod Brown:

Senator Sherrod Brown doesn’t quite understand the motivations of businesses that support free trade. Is it to earn some excess profits as they “[move] manufacturing jobs to China because of low wages”? Only partially, because as soon as they do, those profits are eliminated as their competitors do the same; their only “benefit from the status quo trade policy” is that they live to operate another day. In truth, most business owners who support or object to free trade only do so as a matter of survival. Either you’re trying to stay alive by lowering your costs via foreign trade or you’re trying to stay alive by keeping your competitors from lowing their costs via foreign trade because for whatever reason you cannot. So who, then, are the ultimate benefactors of free trade? It’s you, me, Senator Brown, and anyone else who lives on a budget.

Matt Hutchison