I've read an interesting article about the free trade phenomenon and the emerging transnational class that is pushing for it. It's well-documented and scholarly - no bullshit trying to sell free trade or denounce it. Go here if you want to read it (it's long, but very good):

http://www.geocities.com/trewin.geo/transnational.html

I'm curious where the lot of you stand on the issue. Free trade is said to make countries richer, and that may be true - but where is the money going? Into privately owned companies or public institutions and necessities? Who is "development" really being applied to? Should the market be completely unregulated, as the free trade conservatives call for, or are the regulationists and structuralists correct in saying that governments and international institutions must provide protection from the unpredictable nature of the global market? Some completely support globalization, while others are entirely against it - do you agree with either stance? The book "A Movement of Movements" does a good job illustrating the problems of globalization, but is there any other way besides subscribing to one faction or another?

I'm not necessarily looking for an answer to each specific question - I just want to get everyone thinking about the issues when you do answer.

Every voluntary exchance makes both sides better off. That ist the reason, why free trade improves our lifes.

Private owend companies are much more effective, to produce necessities, than public institutions. This could be the difference between death and life in a third world land.

Protection avoids changes, which maybe improve our lifes. The market competition is the principle of lerning by try and error. To destroy this market, means more or less to destroy the machine of wealth.

The only job of the governmernt is to guarantee law and order as well as propertyrights to every citizen.

Free Trade is truly not what the phenom is; for example CAFTA is 1,300 pages long- mostly loaded with protections/guarentees for corporations.

So what we have in reality is a form of laissez faire tilted heavily towards the monied interests.

We've done this before. How did it work out back then?

To begin with I do not favor free trade agreements, and I certainly do not favor the fast track negotiating authority the administration has.

However I would ask you why should the money go back into the public institutions? Are they the ones creating the jobs, whether they are in teh US or outside of it? Are they the ones taking the risks? The answer to both of these questions is no. WHile the government should get its fair taxes from these entities, that is all they should get.

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Free trade improves some lives, while it is detrimental to others. Agrarian workers, for example, are finding their agricultural markets flooded with cheap grain from the outside, or even patents being put on living beings by agribusinesses. They may find themselves cornered into buying the genetically modified seeds of these large corporations, unless they were to illegally plant their own seeds.

Private companies are more effective theoretically, just as the free market improves all of our lives theoretically. However, when privatization is occurring and the government is favoring certain interests, a chance for profit is seized upon quicker than a chance to improve the quality of the product. The prison-industrial complex is an example of that.

I agree that protective legislation avoids improvements in a business’s conduct; that type of law effectively destroys a true “free market.”

I agree completely, but I don’t know what you’re referencing when you said we’ve done it before, even though it is probably something I’m familiar with.

I can’t say I’m really knowledgeable about the real nuts and bolts that drive neoliberalist globalization and the supposed ‘free trade,’ so could you explain to me about the “fast track negotiating authority the administration has”?

I suppose I used the phrase “public institution” too loosely here. What I had in mind were more of the essentials of the populace – schools, hospitals, health care. Even these industries have become/are becoming privatized in various countries. The purpose of my question had to do with the supposed prosperity of ‘globalized’ Third World countries; is the money that these countries are supposed to be raking in going to the masses or to a select few businessmen and politicians?

You have a valid point about public institutions not actually being a competing member of the market, though; it wouldn’t make much sense in business terms for a furniture company in South America to hand over their profits to the local hospital administration.

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@Luap

Thats right, but on the other hand, a lot of people could buy cheaper food. This means also, that the people have a surplus on money, with could spend on new products.
And of cause, this demand for new product gives agrian workers new jobs.
Look at the history: In former days, 90& of all people worked in the agricultural sector.
The gain for the mankind are these new products, which otherwise wouldn`t be produced.

Nobody is forced to buy seeds, no matter the seeds are genetically modified, cultured or natural.

Profit and quality aren`t discrepancies. Profits and losses are the signals für customers and producers. Quality depends on the interests of der customers.
If you want to fix the quality by law, you reduce re customers opportunity, because some persons focus more on price, than quality. And i ve no doubt, that especially poor people profit from cheaper products.
Quality itself is regulary an product of the marktes competition, because there is not only a demand for cheaper products but also a demand for more quality.

I don`t know much about the prison industrial compex (because i`m from germany), but i guess, that this yould maybe a problem because of the tight relationship betweeen state and industry and maybe also the wrong incentives. It`s very problematical, when the state has an interest to extend punishments for profits.

'Free Trade' is a myth. It has in fact caused a net drop in international trade, not increased it. GM shipping itself stuff from it's factories in Mexico to it's factories in Michigan isn't 'trade' with Mexico, it's internal corporate transfers. Since it became the billionare's mantra in the 1980's, it has increased poverty, wiped out small businessmen and farmers worldwide, and created an enormous increase in slavery, particularly in China and the Pacific Rim, and the United States and South America, and Central America has largely been economically gutted and set up as corporate farms, with formerly independent small landowners living in cardboard boxes in ditches alongside the plantations and used as casual labor. India is trending this way as well.

It's merely another massive welfare program for corporations, and is only 'viable' as long as it's heavily subsidized by higher taxes and slave labor.

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Uh, we didn't get laid off in Flint recently, did we?

Actually the people working in the GM factories in Mexico are happy to have those jobs as they make more than the average Mexican does. As to being slaves, sounds like you're kinda anti-multinationals, which is not a new trend. Multinationals are not angels, but they don't have as much power as people like to think they do. Certainly governments negotiate with them to get factories built, etc., and the econmic activity benefits several places; where things are manufactured and where they are sold, as well as where the company itself has offices and plants.

Now that you've posted the PR releases from the WSJ, do you have anything you personally would like to add?

__________________
"The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A day without sunshine is, you know, night."- Shannon

Free Trade? All this is is amassive opportunty to fix prices for multinational corps.

How?

1-shift profits o where taxes are lowest, by over invoicing imports to, or under invoicing exports from, high tax countries.

2-make 'loss making' sections of the corp break even by billing profitable foreign subsidiaries.

3-strengthening their bargaining hand with unions by fixing profits downward.

4-where companies sell on a cost plus fixed profit basis to governmnts, inflate their costs.

5-make profits from currency fluctuations.

6-avoid exchange controls, circumvent tariffs z
and ease repatriation of profits.

Multi-national corps make nonesense of the ideathat there is free trade.

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Corporations need 1,300 pages of protections from socialist-government action. They are putting trillions of dollars at risk in free-trade and they need to know that Governments aren't going to usurp their rights or property.

Im glad to live in an era of Free Trade so that i can feel better knowing we are finally bringing the rest of the undeveloped 3rd world planet out from the depths of depravity and starvation and giving them jobs to build a better life instead of a handout that does nothing to build a healthy business infrastructure and merely keeps them alive and swatting flies from their face.

Humbling to know America cares so much for the planet. Thankfully we have the forsight to understand the basics of economics and competition in the marketplace to know that if labor becomes to expensive outside our country then we will employ people within thus proving as always that competition makes life better for everyone.

I just hope that one day the rest of the planet will be willing to thank America for the overwhelming good we have done for them.

Free trade is a fact of life, thank God.

"Free Trade" laws, OTOH, are artificial (but fortunately, ineffectual) attempts to inhibit and/or regulate free trade to favor big American corporations and interests.

Prediction:

Either we will repeal our present trade laws and return to a system of tariffs and bi-lateral trade, or else we will have a revoultion.

Ten years post, at max.

Im humbled that big American Business is able to create such unprecedented economic growth in the 3rd world. Also i will note that having a 600+ billion dollar trade deficit with the planet per year is a huge sacrifice for the American people but graciously the we are willing to make that sacrifice for the good of the world.