Globalization and Free Trade
Free Trade Is the Path to a Bright Economic Future
Freedom of trade is really a very simple concept. Each individual should be at liberty to buy from and sell to whomever he wishes on mutually agreed-upon terms. Whether the partners to this trade live next door to each other or are separated by thousands of miles should make absolutely no difference to the logic of the idea.
For thousands of years most people lived, worked, and died within a small radius of the place where they were born. Households and small communities went about the business of life with a high degree of local self-sufficiency. Of course, there was always a limited amount of what today we would call “international” trade even among the ancient Greeks and Romans. But, for most people, goods produced in faraway lands were unavailable because of the natural difficulties of transportation, or were too expensive.
This began to change during the last 200 years. Railways and steamships made traveling easier and less expensive in the nineteenth century. Modern engineering shortened the distances between different parts of the world as tunnels were built through mountains, bridges spanned wide and powerful rivers, and canals were dug across strips of land connecting continents.
But most important, the nineteenth century saw the triumph of classical-liberal ideas—ideas that emphasized individual liberty, private enterprise, limited government, and free trade. It was the lowering of political barriers separating peoples and regions that enabled the feats of technology and engineering to bring the world closer together, and allowed men on the five inhabited continents to trade with each other.
Now people could purchase resources and raw materials that before had been far beyond their geographical and financial reach, and invest their capital and labor wherever it seemed most profitable and advantageous. Moreover, the growing number of different finished goods manufactured with those resources could be sold to tens of millions of people everywhere around the planet.
Even with the collectivist forces of the twentieth century, which reimposed political barriers to trade through central planning, regulation, and protectionism, the impulse toward the internationalization of production and trade has continued up until our own time. But the two world wars and the reactionary attempts to coercively establish socialist systems on many parts of the globe created perverse imbalances in the extent and speed of economic development in various countries and continents.
Because the United States was exempt in the twentieth century from the direct physical destruction of war that impacted so many other nations, and because experiments with socialist and interventionist ideas were implemented less pervasively in America than in many other parts of the world, U.S. economic development and growth dwarfed the rest of the planet in the immediate decades after 1945. America, therefore, had an absolute and a comparative advantage in a wide variety of agricultural and manufactured goods. The American people consumed a large proportion of the world’s output because they produced a huge amount of it.
But over the last six decades more and more of the rest of the world have been catching up. During the late 1940s and 1950s, European and Japanese reconstruction overcame the destruction of World War II. In the 1970s and 1980s a small but growing number of countries in East Asia moved toward more market-oriented economies. In the 1990s the crushing weight of socialist central planning was lifted from many countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America. As a result, a growing number of these countries began to rapidly industrialize, increase their production and productivity in agriculture, and improve the quality of their “human capital” through more and better education for millions.
Changing Patterns of Trade
This process of economic development and growth around the world has inevitably been changing the patterns of trade and the comparative advantages of many of the nations that have been or are becoming to a greater extent America’s trading partners. Labor and manufacturing specializations that the United States has long been dependent on for employment, income, and profits are now shifting to other parts of the globe. Once peoples and markets on continents outside North America began to become relatively freer and less collectivist—though certainly not laissez faire, unfortunately—these changes in the structure of the international division of labor were inevitable.
But besides their inevitability, the changes also are opening healthy and desirable opportunities for hundreds of millions of people to finally raise themselves out of the poverty that has been the lot of mankind for all of human history. We should hail this as one of the greatest moments in the thousands of years of man’s time on this earth.
The United States’ place in the global division of labor is also changing. Goods and services that were long taken for granted as being “Made in America” are and will increasingly be available to the American people at lower cost and in better quality and greater quantities from suppliers in other parts of the world. This will require U. S. industry and agriculture to shift over time into a number of different lines of investment and employment. Capital will have to be used in different ways, and workers will have to learn new skills in order to supply the exports that will pay for these better, cheaper, and more plentiful imports. The structure of prices and wages, as well as the relative incomes of some American workers, will have to change to reflect the new and more productive global economy.
By bringing about these changes with competitive flexibility and optimism about a better and wealthier world in the 21st century, the American people will not only participate in a potentially more prosperous future, but will also set the pace for the rising standard of living that can belong to us and countless others around the globe.
The path to this bright economic future is a policy of free trade. Governments—including the U.S. government—do not have the wisdom or ability to guide or assist this process. They can only hinder it with controls and restrictions that slow down progress and serve special interests who don’t want to face the future.
The best way for mastering the global challenges and opportunities of our new century is to allow each individual to use his own knowledge and ability in the competitive market, free from the controlling hand of government. Freedom will enable us triumphantly to find our way in the new global economy.
Comment by Don Mitchel on 25 August 2010:
unfortunately they have put economic globalization ahead of the American worker and our environment. Manufacturing jobs are created where cost are lower. If international shipping was held accountable for water pollution and the carbon footprint caused, bringing foreign goods into our country, their cost would rise. The following is from a report prepared for congress in DEC 2009 “Although estimates of the costs of ballast treatment may be imprecise and vary from vessel to
vessel, there is some general agreement on average costs.14 For example, it may cost an estimated
$400,000 per vessel for modification of container/bulk vessels to use onshore ballast water
treatment facilities at California ports. More generally, the cost of retrofitting vessels to treat
ballast water has been estimated at between $200,000 and $310,000 per vessel for mechanical
treatment and around $300,000 for chemical treatment.15 Most of this expense will be borne by
foreign shipping companies, as the U.S. flag fleet is a small percentage of the global fleet,16 and
likely passed along to consumers of products imported on these ships.” Until the media,unions,manufactures,health professionals, inform the general public about jobs lost, the human health effects of water borne virus, human pathogens, and invasive’s, ballast water presents, bringing foreign goods into our country while taking Americans jobs, or the terrorist threat they present, the Senate will not act. Action creating national ballast water legislation, would curtail the “vision of economic globalization” as the answer to help the American economy. They will not admit this policy of economic globalization, has flaws despite the continued destruction of our environment by foreign economic interest. So far all we can hope for under this administration is delay by another study,and a two decade plan by the Coast Guard to address invasive’s, while delegating out the pollution, by other materials, and the terrorist threat ballast system pose, to several branches of government making it impossible to enforce, by confusing jurisdictions without any infrastructure to enforce. Unfortunately they know that not being a comprehensive plan it will not be adequate and will be able to be circumvented by industry. Preventing chemicals, like rat poison used by sea captains to kill invasive’s will not be possible, by the EPA through Clean Water Act as they do not have infrastructure for enforcement. This was recently apparent by the lack of enforcement during the Gulf disaster allowing ballast systems to move tar balls into Lake Pontchartrain, despite this administration having been repeatedly warned that release of material through ocean development would allow ballast system to spread it. They continue to allow tougher state laws that create international competition among the states negotiating with foreign shipping, without the states having an infrastructure for enforcement. Perhaps if the American worker understood this problem and withheld their support for this administration, they would then understand the need to direct the Senate to address the frivolous states rights issue of one Senator Boxer. Her alleged belief that national legislation would hinder her states right to tougher laws, killed the bi-partisan legislation, passed by the house 395-7 for the change we needed in 2008. Economic Americanization will only take president over economic globalization if our elected leaders realize they will be out of office if they do not put our country first. Putting America first can not be done by this administrations plan to negotiate hidden carbon emissions and currency manipulation with a communist country while limiting US carbon emissions, and while allowing foreign shipping to destroy our economy and environment bringing cheap foreign manufactured goods into our country
Comment by Don Mitchel on 19 September 2010:
If our country created national ballast water legislation, it would have a ripple affect in saving human life around the world, as IMO sea captains may be more inclined to use technology if it were on board while in counties without any way to enforce the ineffective ocean flush. Waterborne disease in third world countries that rely on the sea for their food, could be curtailed, charity money for vaccines and medicine would have greater impact as needless illness could be prevented. To use the phrase economic globalization is giving the concept of producing and moving goods around the world for global economic development of 3rd world countries, more a place of respect as a concept than it is. Globalization of ideas, culture, education are great to help eliminate misunderstandings and exchange of knowledge, but the plan that boosting foreign economies, helping them develop strong exporting economies at the expense of our countries quality of life and environment is no more than the results of two decades of political dynasty’s using it as a way to create revenue for their political origins and their agendas. This is being done while putting the foundations of our countries core values and economy in peril by interlacement of our free economic beliefs with a communist countries controlled economic policy. To be dependent on a country to support our currency so our politicians can offer entitlements for votes, when the country we depend on dose not have an ideology that supports any of our ideals, is allowing them to have a indirect say in our political process. (We can never be considered a free country as long as another country holds our purse strings) In other words the impact on peoples life through a policy of ECONOMIC globalization is about greed, rather than understanding. Our country with it diverse population, is already an experiment of cultural Globalization, that currently can not supply enough jobs for its own people. We need national ballast water to be considered as the law of the land, and not considered as the International Law of the Sea.
Comment by don on 24 November 2010:
Cholera is known to survive and be moved by ships in “BALLAST WATER” since President Clinton helped promote globalization with inadequate laws for ballast water in the 1990′s. The US economy is dependent on foreign imports, with our leaders having to kowtow to China because of economic domination. Now the North Korea aggression, diverting America, to plead for China to intervene again, to mellow their allied countries military exploits will probably put the nail in the coffin for our countries ability to act with meaningful ballast water legislation that would affect China’s bottom line. Knowing North Korea historically owes its existence to China and its current survival is probably dependent on them, dose anyone think that perhaps China allows North Korea out of their box to divert US attention away from currency manipulation and an agenda to bring manufacturing jobs back to our country, by creating diplomatic dependency? This diplomatic dependency, along with dependency for goods to supply our largest employers plus the need to finance the wars and provide entitlements will be the guide for this administration lack of strength to create a US policy governing all states with equal protection ,regarding human health and ballast water. Meaningful action would have a negative short term effect on our economy and the 2012 presidential election. This administration current environmental policy for ballast water shows they will not worry about America’s loss of stature and core values of freedom forever. They will not consider the long term effects that quick strong ballast water legislation would have to strengthen our economy, our independence and freedom for decades. With China now controlling the worlds economies by their currency actions, controlled work force size of have and have nots , and because of our politicians interlacing our economies and freedoms through treaties and debt, one has to wonder if those in the world who consider the United States the Great Devil, understand who is financing the war on terror and who is benefiting the most as Americas courageous patriotic soldiers die and are mutilated, believing they are protecting American freedoms. Economic globalization in some business and manufacturing is inevitable and positive, but with this administration plan, our current policy of economic globalization fosters more dependence on China by providing them an economic advantage to provide cheaper goods at the peril of our countries environmental destruction, by the pass given to ships bringing foreign manufactured imports. Yet they still promote it for our future, as the grandiose plan for humanity, which is to rely on Communist China to lead the economies of the world in the future.
Comment by don on 2 June 2011:
party discussion ballast water cost v/s human health
Anyone who follows the history of ballast water should realize that after Senator Boxer killed legislation in 2008 passed in the House 395-7, to protect us from ballast water our politicians have been caving in to foreign shipping which constitutes the majority of flag ships in US waters. They currently have discussions going on in Congress concerning the economic problems this would create for shipping. California’s action reversing their stance for tough regulations despite Senator Boxers claim that the legislation she killed for the whole country was not strong enough, points out the political game they are playing with American health an environment. Not a single piece of new legislation has been introduced in Congress by either party since, and the EPA had to be sued to even address the idea of creating a standard. Our President as commander and chief, three years after allegedly supporting congressional legislation in 2008 has done nothing but allow a continuous delay on Coast Guard standards, the latest being a delay to “correlate” ( after the next presidential election) with a yet undeveloped EPA standard. New York’s governor, as attorney general developed their purposed tough standards and has now delayed them in conjunction. It is about our dependence on foreign manufactured products to bolster our economy, and sadly although America was capable of putting a man on the moon, because shipping interest say that: ” technology is not out there ” significant action will probably never be taken. What ever weak action is taken environmentalist will have to accept and new shipping investments to develop a fix for the problem will be minimal as they know the political will is gone the same as many of the politicians who did care, Granholm, Schwarzenegger, Patterson, Strickland, Oberstar, etc. Interesting with the political help of our President, Senator Boxer the person responsible for killing national ballast water legislation was reelected. Not surprising since the issue of ballast water is never public-ally broad cast by the news media, despite the severe affects the way it is handled will affect both, Americans and the worlds health and environment forever. The ironic travesty will be the way some who claim to care about environmental stewardship along with the shipping interest will portray weak action with respect and decorum as a great achievement, further destroying a chance for future significant actions. Shipping has won as this problem is not even close to being solved.
Comment by don on 2 June 2011:
party discussions ballast water cost v/s human health
Anyone who follows the history of ballast water should realize that after Senator Boxer killed legislation in 2008 passed in the House 395-7, to protect us from ballast water our politicians have been caving in to foreign shipping which constitutes the majority of flag ships in US waters. They currently have discussions going on in Congress concerning the economic problems this would create for shipping. California’s action reversing their stance for tough regulations despite Senator Boxers claim that the legislation she killed for the whole country was not strong enough, points out the political game they are playing with American health an environment. Not a single piece of new legislation has been introduced in Congress by either party since, and the EPA had to be sued to even address the idea of creating a standard. Our President as commander and chief, three years after allegedly supporting congressional legislation in 2008 has done nothing but allow a continuous delay on Coast Guard standards, the latest being a delay to “correlate” ( after the next presidential election) with a yet undeveloped EPA standard. New York’s governor, as attorney general developed their purposed tough standards and has now delayed them in conjunction. It is about our dependence on foreign manufactured products to bolster our economy, and sadly although America was capable of putting a man on the moon, because shipping interest say that: ” technology is not out there ” significant action will probably never be taken. What ever weak action is taken environmentalist will have to accept and new shipping investments to develop a fix for the problem will be minimal as they know the political will is gone the same as many of the politicians who did care, Granholm, Schwarzenegger, Patterson, Strickland, Oberstar, etc. Interesting with the political help of our President, Senator Boxer the person responsible for killing national ballast water legislation was reelected. Not surprising since the issue of ballast water is never public-ally broad cast by the news media, despite the severe affects the way it is handled will affect both, Americans and the worlds health and environment forever. The ironic travesty will be the way some who claim to care about environmental stewardship along with the shipping interest will portray weak action with respect and decorum as a great achievement, further destroying a chance for future significant actions. Shipping has won as this problem is not even close to being solved. .
Comment by don on 24 June 2011:
Japan dumping waste water in ocean
Clandestine ocean dumping has taken place for decades, now governments openly use toxic dispersant and dump nuclear waste into the ocean when economic globalization creates disasters, our government is relying on an international shipping organization,(IMO) and the integrity of foreign sea captains representing economic interest to use ocean flush’s as an approved way to make ballast water safe, under the guise that invasive’s are the only problem. Sadly these flush’s are now capable of causing greater dangers than invasive species. There is still very little being done to control even the human bacteria and virus that remain in these ballast tanks containing sludge and cyst that ballast system using salt water flush’s have been shown to still contain.