Foundation of power overwhelms world of dollars.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - “Free trade” has never been truly “free”. Even its most vocal and varied corporate-interest propagators have always bowed to the potency of government.
They well know they have no choice so long as sovereignty trumps globalization. Those worldly potent-power representatives invited to Washington this week by a “retiring” President Bush know the true nature of the game.
Many have famously (OR notoriously) played the tariff-card whenever “national interest” could somehow conceivably be cited. Bush’s impassioned pleading in defense of ostensibly “free trade” rings false and even foolish in the ongoing rush into globalization now underway worldwide. But then, why is that a surprise ? What else has his regime been providing, pandering, and proving so potently and promiscuously for its full eight years?
In 2002 Bush was “screaming bloody murder at foreign steel mills for ‘dumping’ their products on the American market, thereby forcing down prices for American industry”.
Bush was already then seeking rapid pump-up of presidential votes in our steel-making areas --with production overshadowed and reduced by price-cutting. “Comparative advantage” thus was flowing away from the U.S. via globalization too close to vote-time. So he used the tariff tool for political purposes with little regard to its other consequences, on our economy or that of other nations.
The rest is history, paid-for by potent forces unleashed and shaping the steel industry eversince.
The true costs were paid-for by the potent further impacts on the workers, their families, their residence states --and the true “national interest”. What was immune and immutable was the profit potency still remaining with the industry, demonstrated by its continued Wall St. welcome; and by continuance as a major exporter of product and performance know how to developing nations.
So long as the simple tariff lies within governmental power, a truly “free market” remains only a monetarist myth, promoted primarily for private profit interests. So long as governance operates with its powerful mandate --no matter how obtained-- just so long will “national interests” be rapidly protected by the simple act of control so defined. By definition, “tariff” proves up that foundation fact irreversibly and universally: tariff (as in "duty") n. : a government tax on imports or exports.
Whether added-on coming-or-going, tariff-take is an added burden on business, defining a “comparative advantage” for some over others. Those in control via other than democratic choice have no qualms whatsoever to manage their economies precisely for their own purposes alone. Why NOT ?
Who can catch, caution, or control them “in the act?” That act-of-control, justified as for ostensible “national interest”, can “play holy-hob with the entire world economy --and has long done just that.”
Inevitably such action by some can alter and addle natural trade-flow and its resulting dollar-tides, thus affecting credit, confidence and national cooperation worldwide.
World trade “is not truly a zero-sum entertainment where someone must lose for others to gain.” But it can be made-so and manipulated, --even if only temporarily-- as too many developing nations have learned to their sorrow in the past two decades.
That’s what makes it a mode of massive government intervention whenever applied, no matter what operative level or how manipulated --OR for what purpose. That’s why there is a World Bank, an IMF, and other ostensible “control organizations” --also up for testing, probing, deeply, desperately earned examination and probable change in Washington, too.
As experts on globalization have pointed out, “the single thing that the developed world could do to help the third world most is to remove its own deeply unfair barriers to trade.”
That’s what truly defines --and also denies and defies--so-called “free trade”, demonstrated every day in very diversified situations, as demanded for “national interest”, always defined by politicians for their own purposes.
That’s why corporate interests concentrate so comprehensively on “trade policy” and expend corporate campaign contributions so lavishly in lush lubrication for what they seek.
They well know “national interest” and how to help define, shape, manipulate and profit from its providence. The most magnificent defense of “monetarism” can never offset the simple facts of world trade set forth by that potent instrument.
Everything involved in world trade makes its success by “comparative advantage” --usually confirmed in the price-- from whatever competitive source, be it lower wage-costs, natural-resource at hand for low-cost plunder, or even open or covert governmental subsidy.
For the latter, read “tariff” in any form or amount.
Long employed worldwide to manipulate and manage any characteristic involved in any national economy, the fact of “tariff” immediately, irrevocably, shapes and changes the “comparative advantage” for any product, process, service or other sellble good. By that simple act any government can change any import/export trade-situation as desired, even over objection by anyone.
Often the chief executive can impose or remove a tariff by independent action. Short a revolution, that act will stand and control product cost in that nation --directly affecting others.
Political as well as economic pressures obviously can negate and even destroy this unavoidable affect, the consequential effects, and any other impacts of any trade treaty at any level. They often are so used, despite standing strong agreement and even signed, solidly-negotiated trade treaties.
“Special circumstance” --read lobbyist success-- thus becomes the powerful reflection of self-interest often offsetting the most painfully negotiated treaty or the very wisest and cooperative of trade agreements.
Remember that simple operational truth now well demonstrated in the continuing global economic crisis. Those gathering in Washington this week will be well advised to take very strong stock in whatever can be done to control, minimize, remedy and democratize the world economic system.
What they may not fully understand is that if they do not work out wise pattern, protocol and process for that now-essential set-of-actions, the overpoweringpressures for globalization long underway will do it for them.
Henry Clay Ruark is the one of, if not the most experienced, working reporter in the state of Oregon, and possibly the entire Northwest. Hank has been at it since the 1930's, working as a newspaper staff writer, reporter and photographer for organizations on the east coast like the Bangor Maine Daily News.Today he writes Op-Ed's for Salem-News.com with words that deliver his message with much consideration for the youngest, underprivileged and otherwise unrepresented people.
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