Capital mobility and "free" trade don't necessitate each other . . .
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Barkley's bugged out, in more than one sense of the word, so I won't be able to give him my substantive rejoinder, which is, what are you smoking?
OF COURSE capital mobility and free trade are linked. The ideology is precisely the same. The technical economics may be different, but politically this has no apparent meaning at this time. The fact that J. Bhagwhati can call for one and not the other doesn't matter too much. Old J. called NAFTA a trade bloc, not free trade, and this old world kept right on turnin'. Joe Stiglitz talked about capital controls and he's leaving the WB. Saying you can do one and not the other is like saying General Motors would let you nationalize Ford and Chrysler.
On the economic merits this notion (free trade yes, capital mobility no) is also suspect. It's a little late to start telling U.S. workers to limit themselves to capital controls. The jobs have left already. We've had roughly 20 years of wage stagnation and union decline.
Here as with other pencil and paper solutions, what satisfies textbook theory may not work in politics. Invoking Sweden as a rallying point for the problems of U.S. workers is not serious. We learn in econ that wage regulation is bad, progressive redistributive taxation is o.k. Suppose you can't get the latter, but you can get the former? Out of bounds? Let's get real!
I continue to fail to see the difference between these two cases:
A) striking workers prevent scabs from doing their jobs at lower pay and labor standards; scabs' immediate interests are harmed, long-term perhaps not, depending on how the labor movement can expand;
B) workers in industrial core prevent competitive imports from coming in by some legislative means; for the sake of argument, let's suppose the imports do not have the stigma of being non-union, child labor, or whatnot.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? In both cases some upward pressure on product prices is plausible. In both cases innocent workers are harmed. I couldn't give a flying fuck how bogus the anti-dumping suits are. The object is to build the labor movement. From an intellectual and ethical standpoint, it is better for labor in different countries to make common cause, in which context the source of imports *would* be germane. If unionized workers in X countries are making steel, the way to resolve conflicts is to divvy up the market, following the principle of keeping everybody advancing in terms of living standards. (why else would any national group want to join in?) Or devise ways of moving excess workers to another sector w/minimal costs to them. Clearly the WTO/IMF/WB are not the place for such arrangements. There is no place for them right now. So nix the whole shootin' match, but hold out the alternative of a different sort of globalism.
The real problem w/labor now is not incipient nationalism or anti-immigration sentiment. It's the likelihood of a deal that ratifies present arrangements w/no more than cosmetic modification. This problem and the vacuum it entails on the left is also opportunity for Buchanan and the right.
mbs