I completely support heavily penalizing companies that do this.
Well thats tough. International trade deals never work for 100% of people.
In theory, everyone is. In the facts, you can't penalize big companies who do it because those big companies represent too much money (hence have politicians' ears) and small companies may lose the little profit that allows them to stay afloat. In both cases the bosses of the companies can pressure against penalizing by arguing that without cheap labor they will make less profit (bad for the overall economy) and will have to lay off those who work legally (even worse for the economy). That's why serious legislation for penalizing illegal work never really happens, and that's why illegals keep finding jobs, despite all the rah-rah.
Regarding international trade, yeah that's more complex but we all know that trade agreements are never "negotiated" on equal footing, which is the nature of the game, and indeed no "agreement" (even a "true" agreement) satisfies everyone, but the thing is that these trade agreements are FAR from that, especially because you don't have equal economies in the discussion. In the West you have capital-intesive and subsidized economies that are "mature", while in Africa for example you have labor-extensive unsubsidized developping economies. The former will always be more competitive than the latter. The problem is, while Europe and the US could protect their growing economies (which they both did and stil do, despite the rhetoric about free trade and free market), African countries cannot protect theirs (mainly because their political choices are limited since the debt crisis and, well, the risk of having an "accident" or some "rebels" taking over) they have to open up local economies, that have a hard time competing with western ones.
That's how you end up with some European products in Africa that are cheaper than local ones
