----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad DeLong" <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 5:37 PM Subject: Re: anti-globalization label
> >I'm tired of the corporate-owned media calling people opposed to
> >corporate globalization, anti-globalization. They might as well
> >call us flat earthers.
>
> I'd be happy to do that, too... :-)
>
>
>
> >Has this been discussed in some leftie thing that I missed? The
> >abortion people have good PR terms - pro-life and pro-choice. Why
> >have we let them get away with appropriating the globalization label
> >and saying we're opposed to it?
> >
> >I think the term pro-internationalism is good.
>
> But that gets the steelworkers mad, and the textile workers too...
>
> Consider the groups that were at Seattle:
>
>
> The Turtle People were complaining that the WTO was getting in the
> way of the U.S. Congress's dictating Indian environmental policy. The
> WTO said that it was unfair for the U.S. Congress to prohibit imports
> of shrimp caught without turtle-excluder devices off of India while
> allowing imports of shrimp caught without turtle-excluder devices in
> the Caribbean.
>
> The textile workers were complaining that the U.S. had committed to
> (sometime in the far future) the phase-out of the Multi-Fiber
> Agreement that restricts textile exports to the U.S. from places like
> Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and Nicaragua that
> <sarcasm>really don't need or want the work.</sarcasm>
>
> The Hollywood unions were complaining that NAFTA was not neoliberal
> enough: their complaint was that NAFTA allowed the Canadians a
> special carve-out to preserve Canadian culture and entertainment.
>
> Others were complaining that Starbucks bought beans grown and picked
> by poor workers on large plantations in (poor) Indonesia rather than
> beans shade-grown and picked by middle-class Costa Rican farmers.
>
> Still others were complaining that McDonalds opens restaurants
> outside the United States.
>
> Still others were complaining that McDonalds opens restaurants inside
> the United States...
>
>
>
> We neoliberals at least have broad agreement that developing-country
> governments are corrupt, by and large (East Asia excepted) lack the
> competence to run successful developmental states, and hence the best
> chance is to try to shrink them to keep them out of the way of
> economic development for a generation or so. We have broad agreement
> that maximizing economic contact--trade, investment, et cetera--is
> our best chance for accelerating technology transfer to poor
> economies and hence putting ourselves on the road to what may for the
> first time in history become a truly human world.
>
> You can't even agree whether the big problem is that the U.S.
> Congress does not exercise enough or exercises too little dominion
> over India...
>
>
> Brad DeLong
=================
Of course the neoliberals have plenty of contradictions of their own out for public amusement--we won't mention those deep theoretical pathologies that are conveniently off Tom Friedman's tiny map of planet earth or Michael Moore's and Patrick Low's inability to answer why no ecologists are on the WTO's staff as if international trade had no externalities by definition.......Ain't collective action great?
US industry opposes Bush steel tariffs
Blair risks EU ire by pushing for British exemptions
David Gow, industrial editor Wednesday April 10, 2002 The Guardian
Tony Blair has won the backing of parts of American industry for his campaign to persuade President Bush to exempt British steel from punitive import tariffs, it emerged yesterday.
The prime minister intervened directly with Mr Bush during his weekend talks in Texas, arguing that the up to 30% tariffs should be lifted from almost 300,000 tonnes of specialised UK steel products.
His efforts are likely to prompt the ire of European trade negotiators, who have indicated that Britain should form a united front with them.
Mr Blair is known to have warned the US president that his decision to protect American steel companies would backfire at home before Mr Bush imposed the tariffs on March 5.
Since then US steel producers, including those in chapter 11 bankruptcy, are reported by industry insiders to have raised prices by between 15% and 25% for consumers such as the car and can industries which are also urging President Bush to rethink his policy.
The prime minister, lobbied hard by British steel firms such as Corus and unions, warned Mr Bush that his measures would damage US industry as well as provoke a trade war. An estimated eight to ten jobs in US steel-consuming industries will be lost for every one saved among steel-producers, according to US economists.
The rise in US steel prices, allegedly accompanied by threats to withhold steel if customers refuse to pay up, even on existing orders, may paradoxically enable European exporters to continue selling to the US even with the extra tariffs.
Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel group, is lobbying for exemptions on 160,000 tonnes of UK-produced steel and on some or all of 490,000 tonnes produced at its Ijmuiden plant in Holland. It argues that much of these steel products cannot be supplied by US producers.
Steel industry sources said as much as 285,000 tonnes of British steel could or should be exempted while government insiders said as many as eight firms, including Corus, would benefit from special treatment.
Mr Blair's intervention came after personal appeals from Denis MacShane, foreign office minister and MP for Rotherham where Corus employs about 2,000 and 10% of output goes to the US.
Patricia Hewitt, trade and industry secretary, who visits the Rotherham plant next week, is also lobbying US diplomats and officials to exempt British steel products.
Pascal Lamy, the trade commissioner, insisted that Britain should stand behind the common EU strategy against the US tariffs yesterday.
His spokesman said: "I have no knowledge of substantive talks taking place on this issue or on any possible arrangement to exclude any product." The government and Corus stood "four-square behind the European measures".
Whitehall sources insisted the government was pursuing a "twin-track" approach, supporting Mr Lamy in his decision to impose safeguard measures to protect EU producers from a flood of steel refused entry to the US and to prepare retaliatory or compensatory measures for the American moves.
They and industry insiders insisted that British firms, backed by ministers, were at liberty at the same time to seek exemptions under the provisions of section 201 of the US trade act used by Mr Bush to impose tariffs. Privately they have sharply criticised Mr Lamy for failing to forestall the US moves and to draw up an adequate response.