system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are free trade agreements so critisized?

For instance NAFTA, TTP, TTIP. For all I see they all have a good intention to boost trade between countries with less restrictions. Still, on a weekly basis I hear about the harm they cause. What went wrong and why do they exist?
gpt
One issue is that free trade naturally means more competition. Say you've got a good little business making and selling gizmos in the US. No one in the US does it better and cheaper than you, so you're doing well.

Now a free trade agreement is signed with China, which means they are suddenly allowed to export gizmos to the US and sell them there. Wages are lower there so their gizmos are 40% cheaper than yours. For all the people who buy gizmos, that's wonderful, and if you look at the economy as a whole it might even boost growth (because all the gizmo buyers now have more money let to spend on other things, plus whatever they build using gizmos can now be made cheaper and in greater numbers), but it *also* threatens your job. It may create new jobs, but it *also* costs existing jobs. 

For your country as a whole, the free trade deal might be a net benefit, but for some individuals in that country, it means a loss of their job or their family business. If this process runs unchecked for a long period, you end up with large areas of the country where virtually no jobs and no industry exists, where unemployment and poverty is rampant, even while he country *as a whole* becomes wealthier. This has happened in both the US and the UK, for example. The cities are doing great, but in other areas, people have *nothing*, because their old coal or steel mines closed, as free trade agreements meant the same could be imported more cheaply, and while new jobs were created in the big cities, nothing happened in these desolate areas.

Another problem is that these "modern" trade agreements have tended to have some dubious provisions in them allowing huge corporations to sue countries if they introduce laws that make it harder for the corporation to sell their goods. For example, some countries have been sued by big tobacco corporations because they introduced laws to discourage smoking. Others have been sued for blocking mining companies from creating new, environmentally harmful, mines in populated areas. The EU has dropped bans of certain harmful pesticides in anticipation of TTIP, because such a ban would risk a lawsuit if the trade deal was ratified.

The especially problematic thing about these lawsuits is that (1) these corporations often have greater revenues than the GDP of many smaller countries, and the country might simply be unable to afford losing such a lawsuit and be forced to just do what the corporation wants them to.
Additionally, these cases are not taken to actual courts, but are run by special tribunals which are effectively above national law: they judge *solely* based on the text of the trade deal, not on what is actually legal in the country in question.

Such investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) have the potential to be devastating for democracy, as you end up with corporations effectively coercing governments into writing or lifting certain laws.