Some simple replies.
1. The following seems to me to be a fallacy of composition:
"This means that for world economy to grow at any given annual rate, say, two percent, world exports must grow at an increasing rate."
2. I think I have already made the same point about the threat of social protection being used as a weapon to win more concessions for exports and TRIM-TRIP like regulations for US capital. That is why I called the AFL-CIO junior imperialists, and Hoffa Clinton's proletariat bodyguard.
Haven't I raised this problem already:
"China is Boeings' biggest customer, and China demands local content rules which Boeing hates, hence Seattle was symbolically the right place, for the deadlock between North and South, within the North, within the South (many divisions here), on the one hand, and deadlock between US organized labor and "civil society" vs WTO, on the other hand."
3. While trade grows due to the continuing development of an intl division of labor--one that tends to suit the most advanced countries--such structural change tends to be less dramatic than before. It ony seems otherwise due to the slowdown in gross world product.
Giusanni's point is that the structural change and epochal significance associated with globalisation, spurred on by the internet, is a myth: Gross World Product is stagnant, and we are sufferering through a protracted crisis from which there has not yet been an exit.
So I disagree with:
"All he's saying is that world GDP growth has been slow while world trade growth has been fast. Agreed. But why, is the question. Your man doesn't offer a theory, rather an attempt to explain the trade/GDP growth ratio as some kind of statistical illusion."
His point is actually that a new structure of accumulation, based on the possibilities of globalisation itself an oppty afforded by new techs, is an illusion.
4. How we are to understand the shift from ISI to export oriented development (which is consisent with Hans Singer's ideas as long as exports are sufficiently diversified) I agree is an important problem
5. However, I am persuaded by Jim's concluding argument that there there is intensified global competition of the slaughterous sort (though most of the real action of restructuring remains at 'home'); however, I do not think--to repeat myself-- there is a new golden age structure of accumulation of which globalisation is a structural, if not the pivotal, feature.
yrs, rakesh