Having appeared on talk shows, written op-ed commentary and explained to anyone who would listen at the local lunch counter, mainstream economists these days must be frustrated that people continue to protest deals like the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The agreement to lower trade barriers by 2005 was signed in Quebec Sunday by all but one of the 34 democracies in the Western Hemisphere.

The protesters, almost all nonviolent and mostly attempting the difficult job of presenting complex economic arguments through posters and shouting, either want trade barriers to remain or want increased trade linked to improved working, political and environmental conditions. This makes the economists very unhappy. Writing in the Sunday New York Times, for instance, Paul Krugman concludes that, “Third-world countries desperately need their export industries – they cannot retreat to an imaginary Arcadia. They can’t have those export industries unless they are allowed to sell goods produced under conditions that Westerners find appalling, by workers who receive very low wages. And that’s a fact the anti-globalization activists refuse to accept.”

Many activists would disagree with the premise that “export industries” – or to call them what they often are, sweatshops – inexorably lead to the better life economists predict. But more to the point, activists who recognize the reality of world trade properly are demanding that pacts like the FTAA come with worker and environmental safeguards stronger than the insubstantial side agreements of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Economists wince at this because they claim it is the absence of these standards that make the developing nations (with their lower productivity, poor infrastructure, etc.) worth investing in.

But if the workers in these factories are eventually to enjoy, or at least have safer, lives, some force beyond the benevolence of corporate owners is essential. The protesters fulfill this role. They know the hemisphere’s political leaders are going to adopt all the demands on their posters, they know the pace of change will be glacial. But they make their demands loudly from behind the chain link fences because there are not enough people inside the fences making them.

And the protests are beginning to have a positive effect. Instead of the NAFTA side agreements that got tacked on as an afterthought, the FTAA placed at its center a “democracy clause.” President Bush added Sunday, “Our commitment to open trade must be matched by a strong commitment to protecting our environment and improving labor standards.” It’s not clear whether either will mean anything as this agreement moves forward, but it has to make economists feel terrible.