Tom Lehman
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> >If you look at the trade stats you will see that this year January thru
> >October our trade deficit in manufactured trade goods has already reached
> >about 225 billion dollars. Interestingly enough our agricultural trade
> >surplus has shrunk to less than 10 billion dollars.
>
> Tom, I ask you again: why no surge in US unemployment from that run up of
> the the American current account and trade deficits if globalization is
> stealing "American" jobs?
>
> Two answers seem possible:
>
> 1. unemployment has indeed been rising due to the influx of mfg imports,
> though we have to measure it as a truly radical Keynesian Joan Robinson
> would have: the working poor in low productivity 'services', the
> discouraged, the incarcerated, the underemployed all cannot find a real
> job, and thus should be counted among the unemployed (the EPI reports do
> contain excellent evidence of the explosion in low wage and very low wage
> employment between 79 and 95).
>
> But why blame real unemployment on 'trade' or 'other countries' barriers'
> rather than 'technological change', 'macroeconomic' policy, the workings of
> 'the general law of capital accumulation' on a world scale?
>
> It seems possible here that the AFL-CIO is ready to revive the dark side of
> Keynesian national policy--beggar-thy-neighbor policies towards the export
> of global unemployment.
>
> What Seattle marks the ensconcement of is simply the Buchananish view that
> foreign ruling classes due to their trade 'barriers' and use of child labor
> that force the relocation of 'our' corporations abroad are truly at the
> root of American labor's weakness so evident in the inability to take
> advantage of a tight labor market--though no labor movement can actually
> proclaim openly such a fundamentally nationalist outlook (but read between
> the lines). With this nationalism comes greater legitimacy for the revival
> of myths of a common American identity founded in a common history, the
> kind of crap that the Schlessingers, if not Buchanans, have been
> promulgating for some time.
>
> 2. the massive imports only represent the real surplus the US enjoys gratis
> at the expense of the rest of the world by simply printing and handing over
> greenbacks (or IOU's as Enrique would put it) for real goods and services
> (foreigners will continue to hold dollar denominated assets because they
> need dollars for oil, other commodities, intl transactions, weapons and
> military protection, etc). Indeed the supply side relief such fire sale
> imports have provided vis a vis profitability difficulties explains the
> American boom and therewith the low unemployment rate (Robt Gordon has
> suggested so much).
>
> If the AFL-CIO's internationalism is for real, let them couple their call
> for the lowering of other countries' trade barriers with a demand for the
> US to dismantle its military state; withdraw from the Gulf and allow OPEC
> to accept a basket of currencies, instead of only the dollar; cancel
> foreign debt; allow inclusion of commodity stabilization mechanisms, nixed
> by the US Congress back in 1947; weaken intellectual property rights that
> allow US high tech exports to sell above value; and reverse deflationary
> IMF policy.
>
> All this would indeed help American labor against the dislocations caused
> by distress exports meant and needed to secure dollars. American labor
> indeed does not benefit from American imperialism, and should instead
> spearhead the movement against it. But quite the opposite seems probable
> presently--I would not trust at all Sweeney and Hoffa (Carey was indeed a
> much more sympathetic figure).
>
> At any rate, unless the AFL-CIO is willing to fight the burden its OWN govt
> imposes on the rest of the world and thereby via those distress exports on
> American labor itself, it is in no position to dictate to other govts what
> they are allowed to do in earning the dollars they must have to operate in
> a world hegemonized by the US.
>
> By the way, I checked out the pen-l archives at csf.colorado.edu; there are
> posts there from around Dec 9 by Korea expert Martin Hart Landsberg that I
> think speak quite well to the same point I was trying to make in my earlier
> posts.
>
> Yours, Rakesh