Nathan Newman <nathan at newman.org> writes
> "for the Nth time- THE RULING CLASS IN THE US SUPPORTED PNTR. The
>AFL-CIO was opposing the US ruling class when it opposed PNTR."
-But the AFL wouldn't be the first union to argue a version of 'what's -best for the nation' that did not find favour with the ruling class.
Yes-- but that is very different from collaboration wth the ruling class, which is what was being alleged.
Some do argue that "free trade" benefits capitalists in the developed world and workers in the developing world at the expense of workers in the developed world. That argument might hold water if the poorest workers globally had not seen poverty and inequality increase in the last twenty years.
So free trade seems to be only to the benefit of elites in either part of the world.
>[me]"but fighting for trade deals that require labor rights attached to
>trade is not protectionism".
-[Jim] Well, yes, actually, I think it is. It protects against goods that are -not produced under US labour standards. But labour standards are not -universal.
Uniform wage levels are not universal, but the right to organize a union without being jailed is. Workers in China should not have a wage level imposed on them by US unions; that could be just de facto protectionism against the interests of Chinese workers. But it is not credible to argue that preventing them from being jailed by their government is a form of oppressive imperialism. The ILO standards for labor rights are universal and concentrate on just such procedural issues, such as the right to organize. No one can argue that those struggling to organize a union do not want those protections.
Defending those rights are not protectionism. Period. No shades of grey.
-In Europe controls are often imposed on goods exported on environmental -or health standards. That's because environmental standards tend to be -higher in Germany and Scandinavia than elsewhere.
Environmental standards are a bit trickier than procedural labor rights, since they are usually substative standards that the people in the developing country might not choose at all, preferring the risk of environmental death in exchange for the gains in life expectancy from potentially higher incomes. Howeer, since many environmental effects are global, there is a stronger call for universal substantive environmental results.
But I agree that the danger of converting environmental standards into protectionism is real and is a good reason to have more democratic voice over all trade standards rather than having them defined solely by rich countries. (Although back to labor standards, the ILO has been approved by almost all countries.)
>Nathan:By your logic, that Supreme Court was
>the friend of labor and development of the anti-union Jim Crow South."
-You'll have to forgive my ignorance of US history, but as far as I can -see this is about the establishment of national labour standards, and as -such an extension of the right of Congress to rule over all the states.
Well, the argument of southern states was exactly an argument about "sovereignty" of the states against the North using Congress to impose their labor laws on sovereign southern states. Those southern states held out for the rights to bust unions and subjugate especially black workers to subhuman labor conditions-- and then use national "commerce clause" equality rules to force the sale of their goods in Northern states, thereby undermining unionized factories.
This is the fatal problem in arguing that the US is "imposing" labor or environmental standards on China. If China or any other country does not want to sell to the US or any other country, they don't have to do anything different than they want. It is only because the WTO "imposes" rules on developing countries to accept all goods covered by the agreements that there is a discussion about including labor or environmental standards in those agreements.
It is as reasoable to argue that PNTR was a system of China "imposing" its rule on United States consumers to force them to accept goods, regardless of their democratic desires otherwise.
Now, the WTO and other trade rules in the abstract are actually good things. I don't like pure protectionism and more trade is generally an admirable goal, but to the extent that international law erodes democratic rights to monitor the labor and environmental processes of goods consumed in countries due to mandated imports under the WTO, then that requires international democratic governance of labor and environmental conditions globally.
The key is to make that global governance democratic. That is the hard part, but "national sovereinty", whether for the US or China, is bad argument to make in any case. The WTO system is erasing it in th field of trade, so the only question is what kinds of global governance rules are replacing national sovereignty.
>I hope I'm not being naive about the Chinese elite - who are no doubt
>motivated by self-interest not altruism - but I see that in Shanghai,
>share ownership embraces half the population. Wages are not high by
>western standards, but a lot higher than they are inland.
I think you are naive-- it is precisely the inequality between trade tranfer points like Shanghai which, like Hong Kong before it, end up getting fabulously wealthy without necessarily meaning that this translates into great wealth for all the workers whose original production passes through such cities. The absolute impoverishment of Chinese workers across the country is proceeding apace-- on average, wages may be increasing, but that doesn't help the "non-average" workers who are seeing the whole safety net and work available slashed from under them.
And this is having tremendous impact not just in the US and Europe but in many other developing nations which have struggled to create viable industries but are seeing them undermined by even lower wages in China. Remember, labor standards don't benefit just the US or Europe; they benefit poor countries who respect labor rights versus poor countries that do not.
--- Nathan Newman