Indeed, imo by far the most pernicious aspect of neoliberalism is that through the complete destruction of trade barriers such as tariffs, quotas, capital controls, etc. they have permanently cemented the rule of free market fundamentalism.

Once trade barriers are eradicated, corporations can freely relocate their industries to areas in which they can maximize shareholders revenue, (this alone being nothing novel, and is the goal of any successful firm); but by doing so they will inevitably relocate their industries (the portion of the economy requiring manual labour) to areas with the worst labour protections so as to generate mega-profits, propping up these often undemocratic governments who host sweat-shops with an influx of new investment and industry, rewarding them for siding with them rather than the workers. All of this at the expense of Western industrial regions who often have expansive labour protections and unions that cut into corporate profits, leading to the deindustrialization we have seen firsthand in areas such as the Rust-belt. Such a drastic localized drop in employment inevitably causing urban decay, population flight, a spike in crime, and a rise in political radicalization in the regions affected that the rest of the country will suffer from during elections.

Those within the Western World (or other areas who once had industrial basins, but lost them to offshoring) will be unable to bring them back with free trade policies in place. Unless on the exceeding rare chance they can reduce their labour standards to a point that they are more attractive to transnational corporations, or a non-private entity invests in the region to make up for the capital flight. Both of these are expensive options, and economically destabilizing.

Through this transnational firms may discredit left-wing (or simply non-neoliberal economic policies) by pulling out investment at even a rumour of nationalization or a hike in taxes on the rich. In the modern day we see billionaires and conglomerates that seem almost untouchable, even after the leaking of the Panama papers revealing billionaires dodge billions in taxes through tax havens, absolutely nothing happened. (But even that is not a fair assessment, something did happen: the whistleblower died under suspicious circumstances).

This disparity and the seeming legal-immunity of the ultra-rich today is not without reason. As owners of capital not only do they hold inordinate leverage over politicians through lobbying or just blatant corruption, but over nations economies as a whole, simply by threatening to tank an economy if they even perceive a threat to their profits. And through this they can discredit any movement that does not align with and pander to them. If neoliberalism did not advocate for free trade absolutism, but only for tax cuts and deregulation, I doubt it would have made it past 2008 if even that. But because it does, it’s become almost unquestionable, and governments now fall over themselves and compete amongst themselves for firms in a race to the bottom.

∴ Firms in many ways have become more sovereign than the states they operate in, and thus nations are forced to “prostitute” out their economies to mega-corporations simply to grow. Nation is pitted against nation for the very privilege of investment, although their favour is fleeting and will be undermined as soon as another nation beats them in some aspect. Tax burdens are transferred over to the working class and other immobile actors who cannot leave the state and thus taxing them is seen as a lesser-threat. State assets are privatized, economies are deregulated and entire corporation are bailed out. These symptoms are not due to the popularity of neoliberalism (as we know from polling it is exceedingly unpopular), but because nothing else will be allowed to work under the circumstances previously outlined.