Globalization: No Pain, No Gain
Surveying, with undisguised distaste from the mist-shrouded peaks of the New York Times op-ed page, the union hacks and Starbucks anarchists who sought to disrupt the Quebec trade summit last week, globalist-pundit Thomas L. Friedman sniffed: "the anti-globalization movement is largely the well intentioned but ill informed being led around by the ill intentioned and well informed." What the ignorant and malign anti-globalists do not understand, Friedman lectured, is that global trade expansion is "the only route out of poverty for the world's poor" -- not only a commercial good but a moral one too.</br></br>Friedman's assessment is important because he is as close as there is to the voice of the globalization establishment. The establishmentarian view, as it has evolved in the face of increasing criticism, is that globalization is great not only because it creates wealth in the developed countries but because it functions as a sort of super-missionary, spreading both wealth and freedom among the less blessed nations of the earth.</br></br>Last week in Quebec, George W. Bush summed up the perceived wisdom: "We seek freedom not only for people living within our borders but also for commerce moving across our borders. Free and open trade creates new jobs and new income. It lifts the lives of all our people, applying the power of markets to the needs of the poor. . . . And open trade reinforces the habit of liberty."</br></br>This argument is true as far as it goes. As Friedman's paper is currently reporting in a series on free trade, the blessings of unfettered commerce are a great deal less than munificent; but trade does bring jobs -- sweatshop jobs, gutter-level jobs, but still jobs - - to places where there were no jobs before. And, indeed, free trade has historically pulled freedom in its wake (although, as China is proving, this need not necessarily be so).</br></br>The problem with this argument is that it is a very fat herring of the reddest hue. It is beside the central political, economic and moral point of the whole debate. President Bush gave the game away in unscripted remarks on his proposal to create a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (at last, truly the world's largest shopping mall). Addressing demands that participating countries adhere to minimum standards of worker treatment and environmental protection, Bush said the agreement certainly must not contain "codicils to destroy the spirit of free trade." He added: "While I understand that some unionists are interested in making sure there's labor protections, I don't want those labor protections to be used to destroy the free trade agreement."