Buzz Hargrove: 'Globalization is largely a fraud'

[CHIMO]

Some people may charge me with protectionism, claiming that I want to erect trading walls between countries. Well, that’s another crock. Canada has built its wealth on trade—more, perhaps, than any other comparable nation. We’re much more of a trading country than the United States, for example, and our position as a trader makes us aware and sensitive to the importance of trade. We expect that countries who buy our goods, products and services will want to sell us some of their goods, products and services as well. Hey, that’s a good idea. Just don’t call it “free trade” when I’m around.

The terms “free trade” and “globalization” are tossed around as though they were carved into stone tablets along with the Ten Commandments that Moses carried down the mountain. Challenging their merit or even their definitions will start name-calling and finger-pointing from business executives and right-wing commentators. The fact is that the world doesn’t need more free trade and it sure as hell doesn’t need more globalization based on free trade. What it needs is fair, or managed, trade—agreements that prevent one country from conquering another country’s markets while shutting its doors to that same country’s exports. If you believe this doesn’t happen, you must also believe that a tooth under your pillow turns into a loonie overnight. Trade can be beneficial for both parties, but market forces and corporate decision-making will never guarantee that mutual outcome. Only active management of trade flows, to ensure that trade is fair, can ensure that everyone benefits from trade. Ironically, that is exactly the sort of intervention that the free trade agreements try to prohibit.

Trade unionists have railed against globalization for years, refusing to buy into promises of some great golden future when, to use another cliché from that crowd, “all playing fields would be level.” The neo-cons refused to listen to our concerns. But as I write this, in early 2009, we no longer have to shout to be heard, because the message has been delivered in the form of the biggest global financial crisis in nearly 80 years.

We’ve had credit crises in the past, but for the most part they were limited to one country that controlled its own internal banking rules. If a bank in the United States failed, almost nobody in Canada or anywhere else in the world felt a ripple. But look at what happened with the sub-prime mortgage fiasco in the U.S. The gang who lectured us about the inevitability of globalization applied the same rule to securities, and a bunch of financial shysters peddling worthless paper brought down banks all over the world. It was so bad that Iceland, a country hardly known for its risky investment style, practically declared national bankruptcy. Iceland!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/buzz-hargrove-globalization-is-largely-a-fraud/article1584978/