> >. The
> >international financial institutions pressured crisis countries to
> >export their way out of their problems-exacerbating
> >deindustrialization and a rising trade deficit in the United States.
But this makes it seem as if third world exports are behind the decline in high paying mfg employment as a total percentage of employment within the US. Is this true? Isn't globalisation also responsible for the growth of the best paying high tech segment of mfg, now exporting all over the world. For example, Max suggests that the AFL-CIO is fighting to ensure that Boeing produces and exports to China, etc. from Seattle...but then Sweeney, Hoffa invoke the right to raise barriers against third world imports.
As for the trade deficit, it (along massive new investments within the US) has been financed by foreigners building factories in the US, snapping up American companies, making deposits in American banks, purchasing corporate bonds, and buying US govt securities (WSJ today,A2).
This aspect of globalisation does not seem to be bothering the AFL-CIO. They seem pissed the US is awash with third world imports but not the world's capital?
> >generating equitable global growth and development; adopting rules
> >to regulate global competition for capital and markets in a socially
> >constructive way;
See above. What will the AFL-CIO do to ensure that the US does not hog the world's capital?
>
> >* Providing deep debt relief and development funds to ensure
> >that our developing country partners have the resources they need to
> >raise living standards and implement appropriate labor and
> >environmental standards.
That is to treat symptoms. First there have to mechanisms for commodity price stabilisation (but cheap commodities have kept US inflation low, allowing the Fed not to kill the upturn; so if there is to be global equity, Sweeney must be prepared to call for the democratic control of the Fed, but then hell will have frozen over). Second, to avoid debt the rest of the world must be free to escape declining terms of trade from an intl div of labor that suits the interests of the imperialist countries. But this is exactly what Sweeney will fight again since he is intent on lowering other countries' barriers.
Yours, Rakesh