GLOBALIZE THIS!

Thursday, April 22, 2004

CALIFORNIA BLOGGING

Travelling the Golden State for a few days. See you soon.

¶ 4/22/2004 09:01:39 PM

Monday, April 19, 2004

ZOELLICK SETS US STRAIGHT

Thank g-d we have Robert Zoellick looking out for our best interests, because unions are too ignornat to know what's good for them.

Unions should embrace free trade agreements, because these are the best way to improve workers rights, Zoellick argues. Here is how well Zoellick is doing with improving labor standards in China, the country with whom the US continues to have record high trade deficits.

Zoellick writes: Partners in our free-trade agreements must commit to effectively enforce their labor and environmental laws. This requirement is backed by an innovative process to review disputes and impose fines on countries that fail to abide by their obligations. The fines are not just penalties: Funds are to be channeled back into fixing labor or environmental problems. The United States is the only country pushing for these kinds of enforceable trade provisions.

Isn't that nice? Zoellick often points to the US-Jordan FTA--the first to include any mention of labor laws within the agreement proper--to prove this point that the US is tough on labor standards in trade agreements. Unfortunately, the agreement only admonishes Jordan to enforce the labor laws it has on its books (should those laws change or be gutted, c'est la vie). But Jordan shouldn't worry because--wink, wink--Robert Zoellick has no intention of enforcing those labor provisions in the Jordan FTA.

Here is what Zoellick wrote to the Jordanian ambassador back in July 2001:

His Excellency Marwan Muasher
Ambassador
of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United States

Dear Mr. Ambassador:

I wish to share my Government's views on implementation of the dispute settlement provisions included in the Agreement between the United States of America and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on the Establishment of a Free Trade Area, signed on October 24, 2000.

Given the close working relationship between our two governments, the volume of trade between our two countries, and the clear rules of the Agreement, I would expect few if any differences to arise between our two Governments over the interpretation or application of the Agreement.

Should any differences arise under the Agreement, my Government will make every effort to resolve them without recourse to formal dispute settlement procedures.

In particular, my Government would not expect or intend to apply the Agreement's dispute settlement enforcement procedures to secure its rights under the Agreement in a manner that results in blocking trade.

In light of the wide range of our bilateral ties and the spirit of collaboration that characterizes our relations, my Government considers that appropriate measures for resolving any differences that may arise regarding the Agreement would be bilateral consultations and other procedures, particularly alternative mechanisms, that will help to secure compliance without recourse to traditional trade sanctions.

Sincerely,

Robert B. Zoellick
United States Trade Representative
United States of America

(Emphasis added).

¶ 4/19/2004 02:38:29 PM

NAFTA AIN'T ABOUT TRADE

It's about radical social re-egineering that empowers international investors with unprecedented powers that usurp national sovereignty and privilege the rights of investors over the rights of workers, consumers, and citizens who wish to set high public health or environmental standards.

Take NAFTA's Chapter 11. Yesterday'sNew York Times describes how Chapter 11 threatens to undo the most basic principles of our legal system: the sanctity of trial by jury and the ultimate authority of the US Supreme Court on legal rulings:

Abner Mikva, a former chief judge of the federal appeals court in Washington and a former congressman, is one of the three Nafta judges considering the Mississippi case. He declined to discuss it but did offer his perspective on Chapter 11... "If Congress had known that there was anything like this in Nafta," he said, "they would never have voted for it."

The satandard blind-faith globalization rhetoric focuses purposely distracts from such issues that are necessarily at the core of international trade liberalization by fixating on (1) trade agreements increase trade (incidentally, this may not be so true accoring to an article in the latest American Economic Review); and (2) trade is an economic panacea. If you are anti-globalization, you are a luddite, you are impoverishing the world's yearning multitudes, and you hate puppies.

Step off the economic reservation, and you are labeled "anti-globalization," as I wrongly have been by some in the past. I think this is rather silly. You can stop globalization of trade about as effectively as you can stop the moon revolving around the Earth. What NAFTA's Chapter 11 (and its manifestation in a plethora of subsequent trade agreeements) teaches us, though, is that it is the rules of globalization--set in secret, closed door negotiations, without democratic accountability--which is the real issue with global trade liberalization, not trade itself.

There is no such thing as a free market. Markets are social constructions (see Maxspeak's favorite Franklin quote): the nexus of cultural custom and legal rights and regulations, which define how economic forces interact. Control the rules, and you control the economic outcomes: who wins, who loses; who is empowered with rights and who has rights stripped out from underneath them...and how the priviliges and adjustment costs are distributed between and also within countries.

¶ 4/19/2004 09:58:33 AM