The free flow of capital and information is the visible and oft-celebrated face of globalization. Hidden behind the flash of supply chains and e-commerce are countless people that migrate annually from the Global South to North America and Europe in search of work. These economic migrants form an immensely important but largely hidden side of globalization.
Conflicts over agriculture once again stalled World Trade Organization negotiations, which took a few halting steps in Hong Kong in December. Rich-country promises to reduce poverty and underdevelopment at the event, which representatives from 149 countries attended, gave way to minor face-saving reforms and a promise to keep talking. Developing countries came to the table, and they walked away with crumbs.
Mainstream policy economics has been gradually lowering its claims about the positive impact of trade on development and poverty reduction. The new approach is a compassionate agenda that says if trade liberalization is to reduce poverty, it must be flanked by public investment in infrastructure and human capital. However, this new agenda raises numerous questions about how to finance public investments, whether these investments should be sequenced in advance of liberalization, and whether trade liberalization is desirable if the investments are not made. Most importantly, the new agenda still does not address the systemic critique that trade liberalization hinders development by eliminating important policy tools.
Yesterday, the world’s trade ministers began meeting in Hong Kong to make a final attempt to salvage world trade talks. For many poorer nations, no deal will be better than the bad deal on the table.
We stand, first, with the emerging scientific consensus, which tells us we have very little time to act if we honestly expect to avoid a global (as opposed to a “merely local”) climate catastrophe. Further, we insist, contrary to the pretended realism of those who seek to be “reasonable,” on a rather direct approach. We do not, for example, imagine that carbon concentrations that would quite probably yield 3ºC or 4ºC of warming can reasonably be considered “safe.” 1 Instead, we prefer to stay in the reality-based world of those (the E.U., the Climate Action Network) who draw the line at 2ºC maximum (which is itself not by any means safe) and who admit that avoiding a global climate catastrophe is going to be difficult indeed.
The trade and labor debate is an important issue in both the ILO and the WTO.
Key Points
Key Points