>Huh? What threat? What sanctions? Who? When?
>The AFL action in the Petro
>IPO presented an obstruction to privatization.
>What makes you think the Chinese regime is
>reluctant to privatize?
I am not accusing the AFL-CIO of leading the charge to privatize. What I am saying is that if annualized review is maintained, then the US capitalist state can exert ever greater pressure to speed up privatization (there is surely reluctance to go at the pace the US would like) and to ensure that foreign buyers (instead of corrupt party insiders) can get what they want (which may mean overuse of foreign inputs and repatriation of profits in the long run).
>mbs: Actually trade w/China is doing the opposite of 'military
>subordination.' It's bolstering their defense capability. That's
>one thing that riles up the right about China in the WTO.
Of course I agree, so the right wants to stifle or at least heavily regulate trade with China, prevent further integration of world economy and to get the most liberal definition of dual use technology which may not pass WTO standards (at the same time, the right doesn't the American business will have to give up much because most of the concessions they want can be had through bilateral deals).
As I said, labor is simply being a sucker to national security state interests in holding up PNTR. You have to remember the extent to which the US has been willing to tolerate economic losses (Marshall Aid plan was a substantial cost that helped build up industrial competitors on the condition that they rout communists and respect embargo on the Soviets) in order to pursue intransigiently ideological (Lockean rights, etc) and security concerns--let's face it, a lot of that aid should have gone to the colonized world but the US Soviet containment strategy took precedence above all else.
Who knows? Third world aid may have helped lay the ground for industrialization and more imports of US capital goods, which would have been economically better than giving a massive stimulus, along with protection, to the US' strongest competitors. But simple economics was subordinated to ideology and security. And this may well happen in the case of China.
Of course business may be salivating at the possibilities of the China deal but the capitalist state has other larger concerns to protect than immediate profit. Labor enters this game as nothing more than a dupe for national security state groups and anti communist ideologues (who think the existence of state owned enterprises is a violation of laws of nature and an affront to god). It's not that labor itself has an imperial agenda, though there seem to remain some afl cia types within the union.
Yours, Rakesh