Barkley on WTO, etc

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Sun Dec 19 20:22:34 PST 1999


Doug,

It seems to me that China's entry into the WTO will be up to negotiation until the last minute, the US doing everything it can to win every concession it wants as quid pro quo not to vote for non application. With Japan's shakiness and its own internal market on the edge of implosion (how's that one trillion dollar stimulus plan coming along?), the broader Asian market cannot be counted on, so access to the US market is everything. As I have said before, the US has China by the balls here. And Clinton can use the threat of non application inspired by fierce labor resistance to get China to make it worth his while to take the political risks in the face of Buchananism to face that opposition down.

Plus, given the AFL-CIO's own interest in lowering other countries' trade barriers, Sweeney, Palley, etc. may call off the wolves if the US ruling class gets what it wants. They seem to me in the classic mode of junior imperialists. There is more money and higher wages to be made in services, computer and high tech exports to China than from saving the toy, shoe and clothes industries in the US. And Max and Palley know that. They are fighting to open China up so that intl division of labor continues to take a form that suits the interest of the most advanced capitalist nations. In particular, my bet is what they will end up fighting for is that even goods made for consumption in China be made in the US and exported, depriving China of the ability to ensure the transfer of tech and the employment of local labor. This is the narrow agenda of the 'labor movement' today. I'll say it again: this is the social imperialism of the 2nd International redux.

I share Hart-Landsberg's and Yoshie's skepticism of making non appplication for or the question of China the first priority of the labor movement in the new century (and I'll remind myself here that no one has been a more dogged and, as always, empirically based opponent of those who exaggerate the effects of globalisation than you, so I imagine that based on your own analysis, you share their skepticism about the priority of the China question, no?).

But this is the mandate the AFL-CIO thinks it received from the Seatte protests. This seems to me a tremendously disturbing development.

As for solidarity with the Chinese working class, it should not include the exclusion of China from world trade. The Chinese working class has to control that trade, not be deprived of even using it. Autarchy is not an option, and it should be used as a threat.

Yours, Rakesh



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