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FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS Written By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith Key Points
For the past decade, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the U.S. government has promoted a model of free-market global capitalism that it claimed would benefit the great majority of people both at home and abroad. This model has failed. The countries that were the showcases for globalization's success are now in economic shambles. South Korea's economy has shrunk by 45% and Thailand's by 50%. Indonesia's has shrunk by nearly 80%, and gross domestic product per capita has fallen from $3,500 to $750. The economic crisis that began in Asia is now ricocheting around the world. Russia is in default, Japan in recession, and Africa and Latin America in financial turmoil. The U.S. "bubble economy" is showing puncture wounds, with a decline in manufacturing and a sharp contraction in agriculture. The new global economy has had a profound and at times destructive impact on the majority of Americans and of people around the world. Given that most people have had little say in designing or governing the global economy, the current structure of the global economy violates the fundamental right of people to equality and self-determination as proclaimed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Uncontrolled globalization threatens the very sustainability of local and global environments. And today the global economy has entered a crisis that threatens the economic security and well-being of people throughout the world. Over and over the mantra has been repeated that "there is no alternative" to this deregulated global capitalism. But, from debates over NAFTA, Fast Track, WTO, MAI, and the IMF, and from scholars and activists around the world, progressive alternatives have been emerging. Their aim is to build a new global economy that benefits poor and working people and the environment rather than despoiling the planet and its people to enrich a wealthy elite. A group of progressive legislators, nongovernmental organizations, trade unionists, and expert advisers have recently helped draft the Global Sustainable Development Resolution, incorporating many ideas drawn from this international dialog. The resolution was initiated by Congressman Bernie Sanders and has Sherrod Brown (OH), Cynthia McKinney (GA) and Dennis Kucinich (OH) as original cosponsors. The resolution lays out a path for reconstructing the global economy based on labor and human rights, protection of the environment, and new initiatives to encourage socially and environmentally sound national and local development.
Commenting on the resolution, the Campaign for Labor Rights wrote that, if passed, "This resolution would be a starting point for taking power away from corporations and putting it back into the hands of the people. Skeptics will rush to tell us that this resolution cannot possibly pass a Congress whose members have ridden to power on corporate money -and they will be right. Its importance lies not in its immediate legislative chances. This resolution bangs on the wall and forces the corporate cockroaches and their
friends in government to come running out and declare themselves AGAINST worker rights,
AGAINST environmental protection, AGAINST democratic process, AGAINST accountability.
And it puts us in the affirmative on those values." Problems With Current U.S. Policy Key Problems
The unregulated global economy promoted by the U.S. generates many deleterious consequences. The Global Sustainable Development Resolution presents a number of them as findings of Congress. Volatility: Global financial deregulation has reduced barriers to the international flow of capital. More than $1.5 trillion now flow across international borders every day in the foreign currency market alone. This excess volume contributes to financial instability and is too large for each nation to be able to intervene to restore monetary stability. The result is a world economy marked by dangerous and disruptive financial volatility. Race to the bottom: Globalization promotes a destructive competition in which workers, communities, and entire countries are forced to cut labor, social, and environmental costs in order to attract mobile capital. When many countries do the same thing the result is a disastrous "race to the bottom." As each workforce, community, or country seeks to become more competitive by reducing its wages and social and environmental overheads, lower wages and reduced public spending result in less buying power. This leads to stagnation, recession, unemployment, and global economic crisis. Impoverishment: The era of globalization has seen not a reduction but a vast increase in poverty. For example, globally, unemployment is approaching one billion. In the U.S., real average wages were $9 per hour in 1973; twenty-five years later they were $8 per hour. The median family income was $1,000 less in 1996 than in 1989. The typical married-couple family worked 247 more hours per year in 1996 than in 1989-that is more than 6 weeks worth of additional work. Inequality: Globalization has contributed to an enormous increase in the concentration of wealth and the growth of poverty both within countries and worldwide. 447 billionaires have wealth greater than the income of the bottom half of humanity. In the U.S., the richest man has wealth equal to that of the bottom 40 per cent of the American people. The total wealth of the world's three richest individuals is greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest countries-a quarter of all the world's states. The downward pressures of globalization have been focused most intensively on discriminated-against groups that have the least power to resist, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, and indigenous peoples. Women have been the prime victims of exploitation in export industries and have suffered the brunt of cutbacks in public services and support for basic needs. Immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities in many parts of the world have not only been subject to exploitation, but have been abused as scapegoats for the economic troubles caused by corporate globalization. Indigenous peoples have had their traditional ways of life disrupted and their economic resources plundered by global corporations and governments doing their bidding. Degradation of Democracy: Globalization has reduced the power of individuals and peoples to shape their destinies through participation in democratic processes. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations, not countries. Globalization has greatly increased the power of global corporations relative to local, state, and national governments. The ability of governments to pursue development, full employment, or other national economic goals has been undermined by the growing power of capital to relocate to other jurisdictions. There are few international equivalents to the anti-trust, consumer protection, and other laws that provide a degree of corporate accountability at the national level. As a result, corporations are able to dictate policy to governments, backed by the threat that they will relocate. Governmental authority has been undermined by trade agreements, such as NAFTA and the WTO, and by international financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, which restrict the power of national, state, and local governments to govern their own economies. These institutions themselves are sorely lacking in democratic control and accountability. They are all too often themselves complicit in the denial of human rights. Toward a New Foreign Policy Key Recommendations The Global Sustainable Development Resolution lays out goals for a new global economy policy, pathways to reach them, and specific reforms in such areas as the international financial system, the World Bank, IMF, and other international financial institutions, global debt reduction, global corporate accountability, and international trade agreements. Goals: Under the resolution, U.S. policy goals include:
Initiating National Dialogue: The U.S. shall establish a Commission on Globalization to develop the broadest possible dialogue by the people of the U.S. on the future of the global economy. Initiating Global Dialogue: The U.S. shall initiate the establishment of a United Nations Commission on the Global Economy to initiate a process of global dialogue on the future of the global economy. It will also create a Global Economy Truth Commission to investigate abuses in the use of international funds and abuses of power by international financial institutions. Global Sustainable Development Agreement: A series of Bretton Woods-type conferences, with representation of civil society, will make recommendations for and initiate negotiation of a Global Sustainable Development Agreement. Global Sustainable Development Financial Strategy: Through such negotiations, the U.S. will develop and implement a strategy to counter those aspects of the global financial system that make it more difficult for communities, regions, and countries to pursue sustainable development. The purpose of this strategy is to restructure the international financial system to avoid global recessions, protect the environment, ensure full employment, reverse the polarization of wealth and poverty, and support the efforts of polities at all levels to mobilize and coordinate their economic resources. The financial strategy will provide an alternative to the "new financial architecture" being proposed by the IMF, World Bank, G-7, and U.S. Treasury. It will:
Reform of International Financial Institutions: The IMF, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions will be required to reorient their programs from the imposition of austerity and destructive forms of development to support for labor rights, environmental protection, rising living standards, and encouragement for small- and medium-sized local enterprises. The IMF will terminate all activities except those fulfilling its original mandate of addressing short-term external trade imbalances. Debt Reduction: The U.S. shall work with others to write off the debts of the most impoverished countries by the end of the year 2000. The U.S. will work with other nations to establish a permanent insolvency mechanism for adjusting the debts of highly indebted nations. Checks on Unaccountable Corporate Power: To help establish public control and citizen sovereignty over global corporations and reduce their ability to evade local, state, and national law, the U.S. shall enter into negotiations to establish a binding Code of Conduct for transnational corporations which includes regulation of labor, environmental, investment, and social behavior. In addition, corporations incorporated and/or operating in the U.S. shall be held liable in U.S. courts for harms caused abroad. Reform of International Trade Agreements: WTO and all other agreements regulating international trade will be renegotiated to reorient trade and investment to be means to just and sustainable development. Brendan Smith is a Senior Legislative Aide for Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Jeremy Brecher is the co-author of Global Village or Global Pillage. Sources for More Information The Global Sustainable Development Resolution is available via the World Wild Web at www.netprogress.org. AFL-CIO tlee@aflcio.org www.aflcio.org Campaign for Labor Rights clr@clr.org www.clr.org Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ccpa@policyalternatives.ca www.policyalternatives.ca/ Center for Economic Policy Analysis cepa@newschool.edu www.newschool.edu/cepa/index.htm Citizen's Trade Watch gtwinfo@citizen.org www.tradewatch.org/ Council of Canadians inquiries@canadians.org http://www.canadians.org Economic Policy Institute epi@epinet.org www.epinet.org Fifty Years Is Enough wb50years@igc.org www.50years.org Financial Markets Center inmktctr@aol.com www.fmcenter.org Focus on the Global South admin@focusweb.org www.focusweb.org Friends of the Earth foe@foe.org www.foe.org Global Exchange info@globalexchange.org www.globalexchange.org Institute for Policy Studies ipsps@igc.apc.org www.igc.org/ifps International Confederation of Free Trade Unions internetpo@icftu.org www.icftu.org/ International Forum on Globalization vmenotti@ifg.org www.ifg.org International Innovative Revenue Project cecilr@hunboldt1.com www.ceedweb.org/iirp/ International Labor Rights Fund laborrights@igc.org www.laborrights.com Jubilee 2000 coord@j2000usa.org www.j2000usa.org/j2000 National Labor Committee nlc@nlcnet.org www.nlcnet.org Preamble Center rhealey@igc.apc.org www.preamble.org Results results@action.org results.action.org Sierra Club information@sierraclub.org www.sierraclub.org/Third World Third World Network twn@igc.apc.org www.twnside.org.sg Tobin Tax Initiative www.ceedweb.org/ttinit.htm UNCTAD gleckman@un.org www.unctad.org/ United Nations Human Development Program www.undp.org
Copyright © 1996. The Light Party.
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