AP Photo/Eric Gay A worker uses a lift to move rolls of sheet metal at LMS International, in Laredo, Texas. P resident Trump appears to be serious about changing the terms of U.S. trade deals, having recently drawn up an executive order to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to show that he means business about renegotiating the deal. But will President Trump change trade deals to make North American citizens and workers better off—or just business? NAFTA, which drastically cut tariffs and liberalized financial flows, but did not harmonize social standards, was sold to the American public as a deal where, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, “U.S. exports to Mexico will continue to outstrip Mexican exports to the United States,” where Mexico would finally “ export goods, not people ” and all parties would be better off. There is now a consensus that NAFTA was oversold. The U.S. has a glaring trade deficit with Mexico, NAFTA put...

(AP Photo/Vincent Thian) Activists wave Malaysian flags during a protest against Trans-Pacific Partnership ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's Malaysia visit, outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Friday, April 25, 2014. T he late Dr. Martin Luther King is praised for saying “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Along the same lines, if we learned anything from the global financial crisis it is that financial instability anywhere is a threat to financial stability everywhere. The Obama administration appears not to have learned that lesson. The trade treaty agenda announced at the State of the Union address is an injustice that will rob our trading partners of the ability to prevent and mitigate a financial crisis. That could not only spell instability for our trading partners, but for the U.S. economy as well. At the State of the Union, Obama asked the Congress to grant him the authority to finish the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade and...