> Barkley, I don't see how you can or anyone else can separate the issues
> of capital mobility and so-called free trade. They are two sides of the
> same coin. The WTO and the other trade deals on one side of the coin;
> the IMF/World Bank etc. on the other side of the coin.
Capital mobility and "free" trade don't necessitate each other--at least if by free trade you mean what the WTO/ U.S. has in mind. South Korea, and before the partition, Korea, has been a "freer" trader than the U.S. for most of the century--i.e. its economy is more dependent on (and open to) exports and imports than the U.S. (and most other OECD countries), as a percentage of GNP. The IMF-Wall St.-Treasury complex sought out capital account liberalization on the notion that freely moving capital would be the equivalent of free trade in widgets, as Baghwati put it. (The World Bank has been critical of this position.) It was historically not true, and theoretically not true either.
>
> We have engaged in a lot of central planning in our American economy;
> only we never called it central planning. On the other hand we never
> have tried to micro manage our economy like others in the world.
>
> What it all boils down to is an easy question for you to ask down in
> olde Virginia, "for whose benefit" are these trade deals and financial
> deals being made?
Absolutely. But just because the WTO and IMF policies benefit the same class of "stakeholders" doesn't mean that the policies--or the problems those policies are meant to address--are the same, or originate in the same dynamics.
Isn't to say the left shouldn't "nix" the WTO. And, as Max said, in the best of all worlds, they wouldn't be organizing around free trade, but something else. Whatever the virtues of the labor movement waking up to their involvement in international political economy, that doesn't mean that they are now or will be committed to taking on neoliberalism and imperialism--which is what we are talking about, at the end of the day, from what I can tell.
All best Christian