Barkley on WTO, etc

Tom Lehman TLehman at lor.net
Sat Dec 18 06:15:40 PST 1999


Rakesh, I'm not sure what AFL-CIO theorists your talking about; I guess there are some?:o) As far as the leadership goes, the various voices have been pressuring both the domestic, foreign and multinational corporations and their governments.

Naturally, our concern for foreign standards of living is in our own self-interest in that foreign standards create demand on a world wide scale.

On a more altruistic note, free and independent labor unions are the basis of any modern democracy. Besides they raise living standards too.

Tom

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:


> 1. What was the consequence of Harkin Bill, the Child Deterrance Act of
> 1993? Shouldn't we know that if we are going to press for bans on imports
> produced by children of <15 yrs old? According to Peter Custers in Capital
> Accumulation and Women's Labour in Asian Economies, there were no
> provisions to guard against the negative consequences of the ban for all
> those families in urban slums areas who, for their survival, are dependent
> on income contributed by children. In her Critique of Postcolonial Reason,
> Spivak reports on the 1995 agreement entered into by a Bangladesh mfg
> group, NGOs and the US Ambassador to Bangladesh to financially compensate
> the parents of the released children and provide primary education to the
> children. It seems to me that Spivak is indicating the 'severance pay'
> amounted to $7.50 while the education provided tended to be useless and
> actually unavailable. She concludes: "The righteous anger of a Harkin Bill
> or the benevolence of a long term benefactor lose all plausibility when
> confronted with the actual indifference and deception that follow the
> dismissal of these children." p. 420
>
> 2. Where was all the righteous anger by protestors and brilliant criticism
> by AFL-CIO post keynesian theorists over the continuing exclusion of
> commodity price stabilization mechanisms? We all know that the US Congress
> failed to ratify the 1947 ITO with such mechanism proposed by Keynes.
> Neither GATT nor the newly established WTO has any of the commodity
> functions envisaged for the ITO.
>
> 3. While protestors were further threatening disruption of foreign exchange
> for third world countries by supporting sanctions which can only be
> arbitrarily applied (since as Barkley has pointed out, they can be applied
> to any and all--or at least most--WTO members), what provisions were they
> proposing to counteract the $500 billion per resource outflow from the
> developing countries, the four principle causes of which are
>
> a. terms of trade losses, this factor alone amounting to a tax of 20-25
> percent on the export earnings of developing countries
> b. debt servicing, another 20-25 percent tax on export earnings
> c. repatriation of profits and transfer pricing
> d. capital flight from developing countries.
> Source Hans Singer in JM Keynes, ed. Soumitra Sharma, 1998
>
> Or should so much of profitability difficulties continued to be put on the
> not too broad shoulders of the third world.
>
> 4. Don't the protestors have an inflated conception of themselves? The US
> ruling class is manifestly using this threat of protectionism in order to
> get more concessions (re: services, insurance, telecommunication,
> repatriation rights, freedom from local suppliers and investors, etc) from
> China before codifying its access to the US market. If successful, then the
> US ruling class will shove trade agreements through to the displeasure of
> the pathetic Hoffa who, along with the AFL-CIO, seems no more than pawns in
> this game.
>
> 5. Aren't we leftists here this least bit concerned with the effects of the
> Seattle protests on the nationalism of the US working class? Didn't many of
> the union rank and file walk away a uniquely opproprious estimation of
> *foreign* ruling classes? Now in Doug's case, I am surprised he is not
> uncomfortable to be in the same bed with Vandana Shiva, but that's another
> story...
>
> 6. If Hoffa, AFL-CIO theorists are going to continue to bellyache about how
> globalization is going to take away 'our' jobs, wouldn't it be appropriate
> at some point to explain why plunging US unemployment has coincided with
> mounting current account and trade deficits?
>
> Yours, Rakesh



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