I said the other night in a speech, this is like the ideological war of the 21st century, and I believe it…Imagine — imagine a corporation that can’t stand what we believe in getting a hold of factories and call centers and taking a bunch of jobs off the market in order to have an economic punishment. In other words, they say, you go ahead and accept wage and living-standard stagnation, and if you don’t, we’ll punish you economically.
Yeah, right. For the real version, replace the bold phrases with the following: an enemy, oil resourses, oil, and do this [i.e., whatever the oilers want us to do]
Chris | 21-Sep-06 at 10:57 am | Permalink
Hmmmm, but are these really comparable in a significant way? You might think that a country has a reasonable interest in trade that is outweighed by other concerns (especially with Canada and Mexico), and at the same time a reasonable interest in making sure that extremely hostile governments don’t have an enormous amount of leverage over the country, no?
Paul | 21-Sep-06 at 11:51 am | Permalink
The point is that Bush, and most other washington types, are well-attuned–probably over-sensitive–to the leverage that other governments might have over the US, despite being blithely indifferent to the amount of leverage that big business has over workaday folks. The “reasonable interest in trade” you mention is, operationally, the interest in cheap labor abroad and an increase in threat-advantage for businesses that happen to stay.
Paul | 21-Sep-06 at 12:04 pm | Permalink
So, to answer your question, they are comparable in a significant way. If the US were energy independent, we wouldn’t care about others’ oil-leverage. But we’re not, and so it matters. Similarly, if those millions left in the lurch by the US’s business-friendly trade agreements could easily find replacement jobs and a tax base to better the country’s social progams, then businesses should be free to leave. But businesses are the engine of growth of living standards and the social surplus, and both of these things decline when they are free to cross boarders. There are ways to ensure that the benefits of sensible trade are equitably shared, but Bush and others aren’t interested in those. I’m not sure how you could think that businesses, now that they have NAFTA et. al, don’t effectively say to workers, you go ahead and accept wage stagnation, and if you don’t, we’ll punish you economically. We just saw this in Chicago, where the supposedly liberal Mayor Daley vetoed new minimum wage ordinance because Wal*Mart and others threatened to head for the suburbs if he didn’t.
Chris | 21-Sep-06 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
To be sure there’s leverage there, but NAFTA strikes me as an unfortunate example, since it probably disadvantages Canada and Mexico far more than the US. Whether current US trade policies make any sense, I don’t know. Actually, I think you’re right that there are serious worries about the effect of economic policies on a region’s (US, Chicago) ability to pursue other interests. But the threat seems very different in kind and degree from, say, the threat that Iran might pose to the U.S. if it teamed up with Venezuela to cut off oil or something like that.
I think I’m turning into a curmudgeon in my old age.
Chris | 21-Sep-06 at 12:52 pm | Permalink
Different in kind and degree, I should say, because the one kind of threat makes it harder to put in place sensible social policies and the other would destroy the U.S. economy, or hold it ransom for some presumably really sucky purposes.
Paul | 21-Sep-06 at 12:56 pm | Permalink
You certainly have a point re: degree. But I’m not sure about “kind”, unless a vastly different degree changes the kind. The premise of the post was that it does not.
As for the harm on Cananda and Mexico, I agree. But that doesn’t change the fact that American workers are getting screwed too, and that this is a significant and relevant reason to restructure the policy.