Americans Turning Away From Globalization

A protectionist wind is stirring America.

Typical antiglobalization tracts spout the evils that free-market capitalism wreak on the poor and developing nations south of the equator. Rich, gluttonous Americans are often stereotyped as the perpetrators of exploitative economic policies. Critical theorists have called the United States the big power in a new kind of empire. So-called "economic hit men" have even gone soft, defected to the other side, and confessed their demonic deeds.

Only, Americans themselves have now grown skeptical. A new poll of Republicans shows that 60 percent of them believe that foreign trade is bad for the US economy. The American right, not exactly an anticapitalist constituency, is turning against globalization.

They aren't the first, though. The protectionist wind has been blowing for a while, because despite the fact that estimates put US profit from trade liberalization somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year, which translates into a sum between $1,650 and $3,300 for every American.

Those numbers come from a report in Foreign Affairs that calls for a New Deal for Globalization, that is, literally a New Deal in the spirit of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's huge public works program to lift American society out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Though the US has profited from globalization, many of its own citizens have not. From Foreign Affairs, "By some measures, inequality in the United States is greater today than at any time since the 1920s." The rich have gotten richer, while growth in income for the rest of the population has floundered.

Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter, authors of the treatise, suggest that the uneven benefits are behind the backlash. They call for a redistribution of income via a tax overhaul. That isn't happening at least until 2009, so in the meantime, and leading up to the next election, will the presidential campaigns hoist their sails to gain from this gale?

Many of them already have. And several free-trade agreements are coming up this session for renewal.

Considering the leftist turn of many South American countries, and in light of Costa Rica now thinking about tossing CAFTA, might the Americas (and who else?) have to refigure their economies?

(Update: Costa Rica approved the free trade deal with the US after some arm-twisting.)

(Image from soartsyithurts.)

Comments

[Buzzb]

Summary: what the 2 Socialists are saying........Globalization has brought huge overall benefits, but earnings for most U.S. workers -- even those with college degrees -- have been falling recently; inequality is greater now than at any other time in the last 70 years. Whatever the cause, the result has been a surge in protectionism. To save globalization, policymakers must spread its gains more widely. The best way to do that is by redistributing income.

Pure poppycock, pure socialism...... Drastic measures from wrong analysis is no different than Al gore telling you to live in a cave because a theory full of holes.

[felice]

A new United Nations report called "State of the Future" concludes: "People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer."

World-wide illiteracy rates have fallen by half since 1970 and now stand at an all-time low of 18%. More people live in free countries than ever before. The average human being today will live 50% longer in 2025 than one born in 1955.

To what do we owe this improvement? Capitalism, according to the U.N. Free trade is rightly recognized as the engine of global prosperity in recent years. All except in communist and socialist countries where they do not trade.