> since if the largest consumer
>nations can use such consumption to dictate production location, it is
>Southern nations that are more likely to be screwed.
Right on. The largest consumer nation has indeed forced through threats of protectionism FDI into all its states--including the right to work ones. Is this what the AFL-CIO is protesting against? Please Nathan. Sweeney is only opposed to such 'coercion' when other govts practice it. Of course southern countries are most likely to be screwed by the AFL-CIO's advocacy of only that technology transfer policy that will help American workers--as called for elsewhere in that document.
The AFL-CIO statement is glaringly silent
>on the issue,
Yup. and the other ones I mentioned.
>"The IMF, the World Bank and the regional banks must fundamentally rethink
>the conditionality they impose on developing countries. Rather than forcing
>austerity, privatization, deregulation, export-led growth, trade and
>investment liberalization and weakening of labor laws, the international
>financial institutions must emphasize domestic-led growth, democratic
>institutions and the observance of core workers' rights."
So after a breakdown--brought on in no small part by Northern protection, TRIPS, TRIMs, repatriation of profit, absence of commodity stabilization mechanisms (all fine and dandy with the AFLCIO)--it then doesn't want these countries to get hard currency they need to satsify creditors, pay for oil and operate in the world market. Basically, the AFL CIO wants these countries to go away when stricken, turn onto themselves and disappear off the map just as immigrants do in Joerg Haider's imaginary. Oh no, that's not quite true. I forgot the AFLCIO is calling for their trade barriers to be beaten down even as they stand ready to impose bans on import surges.
First the AFLCIO doesn't recommend anything that will prevent the problem (except perhaps for the Tobin Tax more than compensated for by full embrace of imperialist technology policy), then it tells them to solve the problem on their own.
If this is the new internationalism--one of the big things that supposed to make this a new era of unionism--what the hell was imperialism?
>"Long-term trends toward growing global inequality continue, both between
>and within countries. In sub-Saharan Africa and in many other of the poorest
>countries, per capita incomes are lower today than they were in 1970. The
>gap in per capita incomes between countries with the richest fifth of the
>world's people and those with the poorest fifth widened from 30-to-1 in 1960
>to 60-to-1 in 1990 and to 74-to-1 in 1995. Meanwhile, the richest three
>people in the world have assets greater than the combined incomes of the 600
>million people living in the 48 poorest countries."
So it's progressive to simply note well known facts?
Best, Rakesh