To Be Or Not To Be: The Nation Centric World Order Under Globalization
By Jerry Harris

The nationalist approach of the Bush regime has carried over to economic areas as well. Protectionist rhetoric and policy have grown while focus on global institutions has waned. The failure of the WTO at Cancun and FTAA at Miami seem like minor policy slips compared to the attention such meetings received under President Clinton. During the former administration the most important governmental department was the Treasury with Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers the stars of the global economy. Now it’s the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz who occupy stage center. Instead of showing any great concern over multilateral trade failures the U.S. has turned to bilateral agreements. As author William Finnegan notes; “the U.S. has recently violated W.T.O. trade rules so consistently that the organizations top officials have likened American trade unilateralism to Bush’s policy toward Iraq.” (Harpers, p. 49)

These divisions within the capitalist class over economic nationalism have also become more pronounced in the US relationship with China. When the Bush administration put pressure on China to increase the value of their currency as a method to balance U.S. trade deficits it ran into a barrage of criticism at home and abroad. Even Horst Kohler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, refused to back U.S. Treasury Department attacks on China. In fact, with China holding the second largest amount of dollar reserves in the world they have chosen to prop-up the U.S. economy by buying billions in U.S. bonds. In turn, this allows U.S. interest rates to stay low, increases consumer consumption of Chinese goods, encourages investment and supports stock prices--all economic factors US globalists have been quick to point out.

When the White House put tariffs on Chinese goods the move was met with the same anger as their attempted financial attacks. China has become the largest recipient of foreign direct investment and the world’s third largest trader. Cheap labor has also turned China into one of the world’s largest manufacturers with transnational firms accounting for 29% of their output and 50% of their exports. These joint ventures and investments include just about every transnational corporation in the U.S. Writing for the Bank Credit Analyst Research Group, Francis Scotland worried that; “The main risk in the global outlook is the apparent failure of the US administration to understand the bigger picture…A retreat into protectionist-type policies of the sort being discussed in Washington would do irreparable damage to the global economy.” (Scotland)

Former Reagan trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz drew ironic attention to the dramatic reversal of roles between China and the U.S. writing “China is winning the ‘strategic competition’ as a good global citizen, while America is a candidate for the ‘rouge nation’ label.” (Prestowitz)

These globalist/nationalist divisions over economic policy can also be found in important areas affecting the working class. With the rapid growth of global production chains both offshoring and immigration has created divisions within the working class reflecting the antagonism between nationalist and globalist accumulation models. Just as Fredrick Taylor broke down the labor process into specialized tasks on Henry Ford’s assembly line, today the labor process is being coordinated and structured on a global scale creating new forms of labor stratification. For many workers throughout the world their economic position and struggle is defined by these new relations of production. The integration of the world labor market doesn’t just mean mobile capital but also mobile workers. The $38 billion sent home to Latin America from workers abroad is now greater than the total foreign direct investment and official aid combined. Some 50 million people in Latin America are supported by remittances that amount to 50-80 percent of their average income.(Lapper) More >>