Free Trade

by Dennis Green

People calling themselves “conservatives” bitch and moan about “illegal aliens,” those some 12-14 million undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, residing now and looking for work in the good old U.S. of A. And do they ask why these folks risk life and limb to be here? Of course not, for that would mean using their god-given human intelligence.

President Ronald Reagan, their hero, achieved two things that have changed America forever: 1) The so-called “War on Drugs,” and, 2) Free Trade. Neither legislative policy is truly conservative, let alone libertarian. Both involve big government intercession. And both have had many unintended consequences.

The use of drugs, especially marijuana and methamphetamine, have gone up considerably since the launching of the War on Drugs, just as rates of teen pregnancy, sexual diseases and abortion have risen in the face of the so-called “Abstinence Only” policy of sex ed. All the effort, time and money spent on intercession and discouragement of drug use has been largely ineffective. These policies just don’t work.

With NAFTA — born during Reagan’s presidency, furthered by President Bush Senior and by the administration of Bill Clinton under the policy of “triangulation,” i.e., pre-empting and co-opting conservative policies, finalized by George W. Bush — protectionist trade barriers between America, Canada and Mexico were eased if not entirely removed. These same policies of free and open trade were extended through the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the E.U., South Korea, South America, East Asia and to China, encouraging the first phases of globalization.

Supporters argued that globalization is inevitable, and a good thing, as American products and companies would thrive in a multi-national business environment. Opponents said that environmental standards would weaken, labor would be cheapened and exploited, and capitol would flee to developing countries like China and India.

One measure of the benefit derived from free trade is a nation’s world trade balance. Following the institution of NAFTA, WTO and other free trade agreements pushed by the GOP, as of 2008, America wound up dead last among industrialized nations, at #188, with a trade deficit of some $568 billion per year. China comes in at first place, with a trade surplus, (more in exports than in imports), of more than $368 billion annually. [See: http://useconomy.about.com/b/2008/04/24/nafta-pros-and-cons.htm]

Meanwhile, Chevrolet opens new factories in China, financed in part by the U.S. taxpayer bailout, where it will build automobiles it will sell to Chinese citizens benefiting from free trade. Harvesting of the rain forest, especially in the Amazon Valley, continues at a rapid pace. Twenty five percent of Mexican small farmers have been forced out of business by cheaper American surplus crop imports, and Canada has become ever more resource-dependent, exporting to the U.S. only coal, gas and oil.

The few new factories opened in Mexico cannot provide manufacturing jobs to all those Mexican farmers and laborers displaced by free trade policies with the U.S. But they can find work in California fields, or as gardeners or day laborers or nannies or housekeepers in middle class New York neighborhoods.

The winners are the multi-national corporations which fund GOP coffers, and nations besides China, such as Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Kuwait, Venezuela and other emergent economies. Conservatives such as Pat Buchanan decry this lack of protection for U.S. workers and smaller companies located here,

And both these policies have encouraged a rise in the Mexican drug trade.

Meanwhile, Chinese venture capitalists fund development of a battery exchange system for an electric bus at the Beijing Institute of Technology. Guess who’s going to be importing those!

But rarely do we ask ourselves why all those people from Mexico are looking for work north of those oh so porous borders…made all the more so by NAFTA, which was supposed to expire last year.

©2010 Dennis Green