In a case brought by Ecuador the World Trade Organization ruled that the EU’s historical, formalized trade preference for bananas from its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific rim, constitute unfair trade practices against Latin America, a decision which may allow Ecuador to issue trade sanctions against the EU. More commentary here.

Also in Europe…this week in the UK a new law came into effect that will make it easier for corporations to be prosecuted and fined for manslaughter. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act lessens the burden of proof necessary and raises possible fines in cases where companies are charged with negligence.

But many observers view the act as insufficient because it still precludes individuals in corporate management from physically going to jail if a company is found guilty of manslaughter. One union representative of construction workers — 77 of whom died on the job in the UK in 2007 — told the BBC the law was “the dampest of damp squibs” (whatever that means), because it relied on financial penalties to alter the culture of corporate neglect for human health and safety.

(Personally, I 100% agree with the squib man. Executives should absolutely be made to do jail time if they are found to neglect human health and safety. Moreover, my favorite thing about this new Act, which I fully advocate bringing to the US: “Firms may also be made to take out adverts in newspapers publicizing their guilt.”)

Finally, golden stuff from Think Progress on John McCain’s purported support for veterans:

Not only has he refused to support the 21st Century GI Bill, which the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsed last June, he has consistently voted against increasing funding for the Veterans’ Administration, which oversees all medical care for veterans:

– Voted AGAINST an amendment providing $20 billion to the VA’s medical facilities. [5/4/06]

– Voted AGAINST providing $430 million to the VA for outpatient care “and treatment for veterans,” one of only 13 senators to do so. [4/26/06]

– Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.5 billion by closing corporate loopholes. [3/14/06]

– Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.8 billion by ending “abusive tax loopholes.” [3/10/04]

– Voted AGAINST a $650 million increase in veterans’ medical care funding. [8/1/01]

What have you read today?

The silver lining, Reuters says, is that investors are betting on the dollar to rise this year against foreign currencies.

One view, expounded by Investec Asset Management, has it that no matter how the U.S. and global economies proceed, the dollar does well.

Under scenario one, the U.S. has a mild recession but recovers quickly with the help of lower interest rates from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Once the Fed stops cutting, investors buy the dollar because rates and the economy will be heading up.

The second scenario is that the U.S. economy suffers a heavy downturn and drags the global economy with it. This would prompt U.S. investors to bring their money home and global investors to seek safety, both of which would boost the dollar.

“For the second part of the year we expect it to be win-win for the dollar,” said Thanos Papasavvas, Investec AM’s head of currency management, adding that he expects the dollar to remain weaken before then.

But is what’s good for the dollar good for the country? Or is it just that certain parasitic elements will benefit no matter what? Paging all economists…

(cross posted at nirmalm.com)

Broadly, there are two dimensions of the “free trade” argument: economic and moral. The economic argument boils down to whether free trade is good for the domestic economy or not. The moral argument is, of course, about whether the effects of free trade policy are desirable from a moral standpoint.

Individual attitudes on free trade based on moral and economic arguments are further complicated by differing definitions of what “free trade” is, and perceptions of how free trade affects that individual person’s life. The survey questions unfortunately don’t fit into this framework of looking at the free trade debate, but we can keep it in mind when examining the data.

Here are the responses to each attitude question vs. the overall feeling about free trade:

• There is a strong personal element here. People who disapprove of free trade agreements overwhelmingly feel that free trade agreements have hurt them personally, and the reverse is true for people who approve of free trade agreements.
• Not surprisingly, people who think free trade agreements make the economy grow support it, and people who think free trade agreements make the economy slow oppose it.
• There isn’t much of a consensus on the impact of free trade agreements on price of domestic products.
• Regardless of approval of free trade agreements, a vast majority of respondents believed that free trade agreements are good for the people of developing countries.
• Even people who approve of free trade agreements think that they drive wages of American workers lower and lead to job losses, although to a lesser extent than those who disagree of free trade agreements. This suggests that there may be a moral component at play here (whether job losses and wage decreases are “acceptable”).

Although we get a very good sense of how an individual’s attitude about the economic impact of free trade might relate to whether free trade is desirable or not, we don’t get a good sense of the moral aspect. For example, we know whether the respondents think that free trade agreements are bad for foreign countries, or whether they think free trade agreements lead to job losses, but we don’t know if the respondents *care* about these effects from a moral standpoint. If the respondents were asked questions along the lines of “Is the U.S. government obligated to prevent potential job losses from free trade agreements?” (after the economic attitude questions), we would be able to start examining the moral aspects of this argument more closely.

Personally, I think that “free trade” is fine as long as tariffs are applied equally, and labor and environmental standards are kept consistent (to ensure that everyone is on an even footing). Unfortunately that kind of nuance is lost because of the limitations of doing a survey. Still, this does give us a starting point in terms of how people think about free trade.

Nirmal is an activist from Michigan who has worked with a variety of progressive organizations and campaigns. His writing can be found at nirmalm.com

But the trade in illegal goods is of course the most lucrative sector of the black market. So for all you get-rich-quick schemers out there, here’s a rundown of what’s hot to smuggle in 2008.

The black market trade in AIDS drugs is becoming a lucrative endeavor in Africa, as well as around the world. Unscrupulous dealers will sell fake or adulterated medicine to desperate third world patients for good profit, and those who can find willing sellers in the States can make a significant profit on the medicine overseas. The situation in the States is such that a person with AIDS and a illegal drug habit can get Medicare medicine for AIDS but not the fix he/she craves. MotherJones has an interesting article on such underground trade networks, which almost seem benevolent from some perspectives, even as they highlight a weakness in our drug laws.

Would a black market piece be complete without mentioning recreational drugs? Hot stuff for the US in 2008 looks to be Mexican Heroin and Canadian MDMA. Marijuana is still rampant, still constitutes the top contraband product worldwide (140 billion dollars worth of it moved in 2007?!). Meth is beginning to recede, thank god, hopefully it will not rise in usage anytime soon. Afghanistan’s good for drugs too, now that the Taliban’s in the mountains. Muletrains of blacktar over the mountains to Russia and Turkey. Careful, though. Drug laws remain severe in most nations of the world, although enforcement is generally rather arbitrary. Don’t discount prescriptions, though! Some countries have massive generic antibiotic production capability (Russia, Cuba, China), and generic drugs are available in any quantity legally. The international prescription drug market, with its innumerable grey areas, is a great place for a clever schemer, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

Russia is the place to go to get beautiful women and girls, who can be traded throughout Eurasia. Russian prostitutes are so common in places like Turkey and India that they are known simply as “Natashas.” Gods, what lives they must live… Of course, America, the All-Consuming Nation, is also a popular destination. The online marriage game continues in full force as well, and estimates are that around 50,000 women leave Russia permanently every year. Of course, the modern slave trade stretches around the world, and estimates suggest that 600,000-800,000 people are victims of the sex trade every year. Sex tourism is beginning to be a significant part of some country’s GDPs, and it’s not just men who go overseas in search of oompha-loompha.

India and Pakistan are the places to go to get black market organs for cheap, if the Chinese option of a bodypart from an executed prisoner is a little macabre for you. Pakistan in particular has turned into a “kidney bazaar,” where more than 2000 transplants were made in 2005, 2/3rds of which were for foreigners. Of course, kidney markets breed kidney thieves, and Pakistan has begun to see gangs of them. Iraq is experiencing similar problems as well. Just remember to use dry ice and ship overnight.

A relatively recent addition to deep market tea-drinking black economy circles is identity databases. As of 2007, there were 70 million identities in the US that has been compromised. No one knows how big this problem might actually be, and profit margins dictate that thieves release information slowly, in chunks, in order to be profitable. So some compromised identities may remain untouched for years. And, after all, knowledge is the best commodity, since it need not be given away to be sold.

And one more growing smuggler’s delight. Guesses? Power grows from the barrel of a… Yep. Arms sales are huge. One estimate puts the worth of the underground arms market at $10 billion. The numerous armed conflicts around the world make small arms very profitable. Currently, Iraq is the biggest market, as the Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni militias arm up under the “peace” of the Surge. A recently thwarted deal between the Italian Mafia and an unspecified group in Iraq highlights the scale of some arms deals. Most sales end up being made from small dealers, however. Good places to sell guns this year will probably be Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Sri Lanka, Columbia, and Venezuela. From Russia to South Africa, a person with a little persistence and some dollars in his/her pocket can find an automatic weapon and ammo.

There was one other thing I wanted to talk about… Oh, yes, counterfeit consumer electronics. The prohibitive price of copyrighted electronics has made counterfeits the only easily accessible option for many people around the world. India has been booming with counterfeit Ipods, for example, but the problem (Is it a problem? Only if you work with Apple?) is worldwide.

The slippery part of black market economics is attempting to measure the number and content of transactions that, by definition, are not regulated by any upper authority. The black market has always existed alongside the common market, and will disappear only when all transactions are monitored or there are no laws regulating them. The black market fulfils a critical function - that of getting anything to anyone who can pay the price - and also gives us a window on what illegal goods are popular and why. Drugs, sex, and violence, as always, top the list.

It is interesting in these times that we have a government that claims to be in favor of “free trade,” while in fact they are merely making it easier for large corporations to bulldoze small businesses. The black market is truly free, and truly trickle-down in a way that the organized economy may never be. If you buy a pack of cigarettes from an old Asian man selling them across the top of a cardboard box in Madrid, you are paying the price he sets to make himself the profit he wants. His suppliers may be legitimate businesses or smugglers, but he is an independent operator, tax- and requirement- free.

The black market’s foggy supply chains are what allow it to be such an influential force. Terrorist organizations, organized crime, and separatist movements (not the same as terrorists, although the neocons say otherwise) often receive most of their funding via complex illicit trade networks. The problem is that many items sold in the US may have origins in such networks. The blood diamond trade, or the trade of critical minerals (like Coltan in the Congo) has been one of the major means by which rebels or dictators maintain their military influence in certain countries.

It is this combination of opportunities for small distributers and riches for suppliers and movers that drive the black market. Whatever your line, whatever your angle… For Good or Worse.

So, there you have it. The Hot Goods to smuggle in 2k8.

Oh, and just in case you think Ohio is unique or a trend setter, don’t. Mark Twain didn’t allegedly say he wanted to be in Cincinnati when the world ended for nothing. He said it because Cincinnati “is always 20 years behind the times.” So it’s safe to assume something happening in Ohio is probably happening elsewhere too—particularly in the Midwest.

Here’s the bad news coming out of Ohio.

The number of adults ages 30 to 45 living below the poverty level - defined as less than $20,000 a year for a family of four - almost doubled from 2005. In 2007, 16 percent of adults in that age group lived below the poverty level, while it was 9 percent in 2005.

In that age group, the percentage of adults with incomes of $40,000 or higher for a family of four shrunk to 61 percent in 2007 from 73 percent in 2005.

Judging from my own college transcript, I know statistics don’t always register with everyone. So please, take a minute to think about what the numbers are telling us. At the exact age (30-45) when people should be increasing their earning power, many Ohioans in their prime are actually making less money than they were two years ago. That doesn’t happen in places with thriving economies.

These are the people that are supposed to be establishing their careers. They’ve graduated from college, they’ve gained some experience in their respective fields, and they are still physically fit enough to be working labor intensive jobs if that’s the path they’ve taken. So why are 30 and 40-something’s in Ohio headed in reverse?

It doesn’t take a graduate degree from The Ohio State University to figure what’s going on. You’ve all heard the reasons. Simply put, there are no good jobs for non-college grads. Many of the jobs that have sustained middle-class Ohioans (unionized factory work is a prime example) are long gone. They’re being replaced with service industry jobs that don’t pay nearly what the old jobs did (insert favorite Wal-Mart joke here). Unfortunately, an even scarier trend is looming just over the horizon.

What trend? The one involving Hollywood starlets, large amounts of booze and drugs, fast cars, and no underwear? While disturbing enough—no—I’m talking about real people here. The same people that listened to the adults in their lives when they told us that a college degree was supposed to ensure “a million more dollars over the course of a life than a high school diploma.” Were they all lying?

The new trend involves college graduates not being sure if the field they are trained or currently working in will even be around 10 years from now. And, most scary, it’s not just white collar support jobs in factories that are being moved overseas or cut altogether. It’s happening in many highly specialized, well-paying job fields. One thing is clear, job security for professionals is quickly becoming as obsolete as the 8-track.

What happens when a majority of Ohioans’ taxes are done in Delhi, India instead of Dayton? With 45,000 professional accountants working in Ohio, making an average of $57 K a year, what work will they be able to find that pays anything close to that if those jobs go overseas? Should they join one of the 100,000 office clerks in Ohio making $23,400 a year? They’d better hurry up because over a million U.S. office jobs are predicted to be shipped overseas in the next 7 years too.

What happens when Ohioan’s x-rays are read at the Calcutta Clinic instead of the Cleveland Clinic? That’s 10,000 unemployed radiologists at $44,000 a year. How about on-line college classes being taught by someone in Chengdu, China instead of someone in Columbus? The average Chinese college professor makes $137 U.S. bucks a month. Ohio’s 490 economics professors make over $6,500 a month.

And what happens when Ohio’s nearly 3,000 architectural jobs (at $67,000 per) start leaving places like Toledo for places like Taipei. Alright, that may be a stretch. How many would-be Frank Lloyd Wrights are really kicking it in Toledo? You get the point though. Where are these well-paid professionals going to find comparable pay if their jobs go overseas?

We all know Ohio is an aging state, but really, how many high-paying pharmaceutical sales rep jobs can we sustain?

While free trade advocates will tell you that there have been more American winners with globalization than losers, the question we need to be asking ourselves is this. Will the “losers” in globalization be able to transition into “winning” job fields? What infrastructure does Ohio, and the rest of the nation, have in place to help displaced 30 and 40 year old (and older) professional workers? Get back to me when you come up with an answer.

This should give you a clue. When I Googled the phrase: “job training programs for professional workers in Ohio,” the first entry to appear was an article written in1985. The second entry was from 1991. The sad truth is that there are no widespread programs for unemployed (or under-employed) professional workers.

Currently, it’s everyman for himself. And judging by declining income levels, “everyman” is getting his butt kicked. How else can we explain away the fact that “most workers today take home less pay per hour, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1973?”

For those of us lucky to have job security, the answers may seem obvious. “Go back to college. Buckle your chinstrap. Quit whining and go out and get a better job. Shoot, work two jobs if you have to. Just get it done.” While the tough love approach sounds great, how realistic is it for someone in their 30’s or 40’s to drop everything and go back to college for years at a time? How are they going to pay their bills, take care of their families, and put in the necessary time studying while being able to afford skyrocketing (pdf) college tuition costs (estimated to be $10,000 a year (pdf) in Ohio by 2009)? Sure, it can be done. But so can winning the lottery. Even if they do get a degree, the job picture awaiting them is pathetic.

Look at the classified job ads in any Ohio city. It could literally read: “Welcome to the wonderful world of restaurant management—today’s “good” middle-class job.” And, with props to Jerry Seinfeld, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” But there is something really scary about it. Did people rack up thousands in college loans (the average college grad is now over $19,000 in the hole when she graduates) just to contribute to the fattening of America by managing a fast-food restaurant? I don’t think so.

Throw in inflation concerns, record high gas prices that could reach $4 a gallon this year, unsustainable health care increases that have gone up 80% since 2000 (now costing the average family over $12,00 a year), child care costs that make you scream “mommy” (30% of single parents’ incomes), and our long-term economic outlook is beyond bleak. But that’s not all.

Don’t forget about tightening loan requirements or that the average Ohio household owes almost $10,000 in credit card debt. What about rising property taxes at the very time property values are declining almost everywhere? Add all of this up and it’s a recipe for disaster. Ohio’s families won’t be able to borrow their way to a middle-class existence for much longer.

Worse still, Ohio leads the nation in home foreclosures. At least this news comes with a silver lining though. Ohio beat back a strong Michigan challenge for the top spot. Not to be outdone however, Michigan still tops Ohio with the nation’s highest unemployment rate. Ohio ranks 7th worst.

Surely Ohio’s leaders have been busy working on sensible ways to soften these blows, right? At the very least they’re using the bully pulpit to give these issues a fair public hearing, no? While Ohio’s governor, Ted Strickland, should be commended for freezing college tuition costs in Ohio for the next two years, there is very little else being done to deal with the current economic trends. There’s no push to help create new well-paying jobs in Ohio. There’s no significant investment in technology. Nothing innovative is being done to improve upon our unconstitutional educational system. Come to think of it, it’s as if the whole state is in a state of denial.

Where’s the call to action? Where’s the widespread public push to get more service-industry jobs to become unionized? Where’s the business communities’ plans for growth? Where’s the investment in the next generation of workers? Does anyone really care that the once-booming Ohio economy has slowly become a giant inland strip mall, full of retail shops and food courts? The biggest threat to our long-term security and stability isn’t terrorism. It isn’t an invasion of “brown” people either. No, the biggest threat to the United States’ long-term prosperity is what’s happening right before our eyes in Ohio. It’s the destruction of our middle-class. Now if we could just get anyone to care.

Kevin Curran is a teacher in the Cincinnati Public School System. He has been teaching since 2000, with the last seven years spent in CPS. During the 2006-2007 school year, over 92% of his students in 10th grade U.S. History passed the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT); compared to the state average of 76%. Mr. Curran believes that parents play the most important role in determining the academic success of students.

Since World War II the international community has been steadily working to formally liberalize world trade, first through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and now through its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The economic justification for world trade is straightforward and widely accepted: when countries specialize and trade, overall economic wealth increases. From this growth, pro-trade advocates argue, all other ails can be addressed.

But apart from the unrealistic nature of this last statement, one of the chief criticisms levied against the WTO is its lack of discrimination between “good” traders and “bad” traders.

Take for example, China. In 2001 history was made when the WTO admitted China after 15 years of negotiations. The negotiations focused on reducing barriers to imported goods so that both foreign and domestic producers were treated equally in the Chinese economy.

The negotiations did not focus, however, on establishing minimum standards for things like democracy, human rights, and environmental protection. China has been accused of government-sanctioned human rights abuses, exploitative labor laws, suppression of freedom of speech, intense press censorship, and horrific environmental degradation and animal rights neglect. It has also been accused of building and stockpiling biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, and of selling these and small arms to countries such as Iran, Sudan, and Burma. According to many, China is illegally occupying Taiwan and Tibet.

But China’s trade surplus reached nearly $180 billion in 2006, meaning it sold $180 billion more in goods than it bought globally. The US-China deficit reached an all-time high in 2006 of $214 billion, meaning Americans bought $214 billion more in goods from China than it sold to China.

Regardless of how you feel about trade deficits (economists bicker about whether they are bad or good for our economy) these figures tell us that we Americans, as well as the rest of the world, fund China by buying its products. By trading with China we become complicit in its activities.

Now let’s look at the US. Aside from its trade-distorting policies (namely export subsidies) the international community has a lot of other gripes with the US. For example, it is the world’s biggest consumer of raw materials and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, meaning it tyrannically degrades everyone else’s environment at their expense, while demonstrating zero leadership in tackling global warming. It stockpiles nuclear weapons, occupies other countries, and legally tortures people. Historically, it has propped up dictators and funded foreign wars. It has been accused of corruption, lack of transparency, and unfair elections. It permits anticompetitive behavior in industries such as software and media. It outsources government services such as defense to unelected companies, and provides them with judicial immunity and legislative protection from consumers and foreign justice systems. It thwarts progress in areas such as international justice and genocide prevention. It regularly opts for unilateral action over multilateral action.

Yet the world trades with it.

It is important to understand the ways in which the WTO is not like other multilateral organizations. The WTO was formed with the sole objective of reducing trade barriers, and membership is not automatic. Countries wishing to join it must undergo intensive negotiations to open up their economies to competition, and once admitted, a member country is subject to the rules and rulings of the WTO.

The objective is simple: everyone should be equally free to profit.

However, the international community has also created a splendid array of multinational organizations with other “simple” objectives; such as world peace (UN), human health (WHO), environmental protection (UNEP), disarmament (BWC, OPCW), human rights protection (UNHRC), nuclear security (IEA, IAEA), education and cultural preservation (UNESCO), and so forth. None of these organizations have anything resembling the power of the WTO.

Only the clearcut objective of greater wealth — untainted by any other goal — has been sufficient to persuade 151 sovereign countries to give up power to a higher organization. In no other forum can Namibia or Vietnam dispute a policy of the United States or European Union, and win. No other body has the power to tell the US it is misbehaving, and punish it. The WTO is the closest semblance the world has ever seen to global “supra-national” governance, regulating — under penalty of sanctions — the most fundamental way in which sovereign countries interact with one another: trade.

Why then, do we allow globalization to power ahead, abandoning our other collective goals of human and environmental health and development? Why not incorporate these goals into the mission of the WTO, so that free trade and greater market access become the reward, rather than the distraction, for spreading greater human welfare?

Of course, the idea of using trade as a means of leveraging countries to improve is nothing new. Trade sanctions, and trade isolation, have long been a tool of global governance. The apartheid regime in South Africa, the military junta in Burma, Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, and the genocide-sponsoring government in Sudan have all been subject to economic sanctions. Their crimes were sufficiently high-profile, widespread, and atrocious that other countries in the world felt it their moral obligation to reduce, or cease, doing business with them.

But “morally-based” economic sanctions do not stop oppressive regimes. Rather, they hurt populations. It is a country’s hospitals, shopkeepers, farmers, and families — not its oppressive regimes — that have historically suffered under trade sanctions. History has also shown that isolating a country trade-wise does not cause a targeted government to collapse (Cuba, Burma, North Korea) while integrating it into the global market encourages democratic reforms.

Moreover, there are no well-defined criteria for when sanctions are imposed: Zimbabwe faced sanctions after Robert Mugabe started illegally seizing land, but the US didn’t face trade sanctions when it legalized torture at Guantanamo. Cuba — one of the most ecologically efficient and friendly countries with some of the developing world’s best social services — faces what can only be described as “ideological” trade sanctions. China, arguably a social and environmental abomination, does not.

Trade sanctions outside the context of the WTO are not the way forward. Rather the “solution” to oppressive regimes, and pretty much all other problems of international governance, lies in inviting widespread participation in a global trade regime and then in harnessing the powerful carrots and sticks of the market. China and the US are eager to be part of a liberalized worldwide economy: they have a lot to gain by being WTO members, and thus a lot to lose by not playing by the rules.

So imagine for a moment a WTO where the rules were different. Imagine that it was truly democratic and transparent, and allowed all its members equal voting rights. Now imagine its mission statement — the reduction of trade barriers — was broadened to to include “the spread of greater human wealth and welfare throughout the world.” Imagine a WTO that included social, environmental, labor, human rights, and free press protection as basic tenants of an “equal” playing field for trade, and thus requirements for full participation in a global market. Imagine a WTO that permitted, or even rewarded “positive” trade distorting policies — such as high environmental standards or workplace safety laws — and struck down “negative” trade distorting policies — such as child labor and press censorship. Imagine a WTO aimed at “upwardly” harmonizing global standards in voting, health, and education, rather than leaving all countries to compete with those with the lowest possible standards.

A reformed WTO could incorporate some of those nobler objectives of other multilateral organizations, building a truly representative global trade regime founded on the principle that “good business” is good for everyone.

For more ideas on how world trade can be leveraged to make the world better, check out economist Joseph Stiglitz’s new book “Making Globalization Work.”

It has been over fourteen years since Congress first debated the economic impact of NAFTA on the United States. After fourteen years of NAFTA, where does the American public stand on free trade? In December 2006, the Pew Research Center asked a nationally representative survey of 1,502 adults this very question.

According to the survey results, nearly half (44%) of Americans believe that free trade agreements like NAFTA are a “good thing,” whereas 35% feel that free trade agreements are a “bad thing” and 21% are unsure:

It’s also interesting to note that support for free trade doesn’t fall neatly in the traditional liberal-conservative continuum that describes political ideology. Although the liberal-conservative designation is an adequate shortcut to determine attitudes on other issues, it clearly doesn’t work for many economic controversies.

Finally, I initially assumed that Internet users might have approved of free trade more because they are more educated and have higher incomes. However, support for free trade is relatively stable across income and education. Only those who have no high school education or make less than $20,000 significantly oppose free trade. This is a very small part of the population and doesn’t explain the difference in Internet usage. So, there might be something about Internet usage itself that relates to attitudes on free trade.

In part 2, I’ll examine how beliefs and attitudes about trade impact Americans’ perceptions of free trade agreements.

Disclaimer:

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented here. Data from the Pew Research Center’s December 2006 News Interest Index.

Nirmal is an activist from Michigan who has worked with a variety of progressive organizations and campaigns. His writing can be found at nirmalm.com

NAFTA indeed posed many threats; that companies would sidestep stricter regulatory standards in the US by moving south of the border; that foods grown with pesticides banned in the US but not in Mexico would end up in our markets and bloodstreams; that NAFTA would not only allow the exploitation of looser standards elsewhere, it would encourage the drafting of weaker standards as a means of attracting economic investment.

NAFTA, it was stressed, could potentially nullify more than three decades of work by US environmentalists.

So the greens got tough, pushing Congress to prevent fast track authorization for the deal, and forcing debate on the particulars of the agreement. Their efforts bore fruit; representatives from five green NGOs were placed on a top-level NAFTA advisory committee, and the White House pledged to conduct parallel negotiations concerning environmental effects.

The Clinton administration was true to that word, and declined to send NAFTA to Congress for ratification until the side agreement was reached. Among other things, that agreement barred any nation involved from lowering standards in order to attract business, and gave domestic law precedence over international trade agreements — the need for which was demonstrated by the dolphin / tuna ruling of GATT, the precursor to the WTO.

Still, many organizations, including the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, remained opposed to NAFTA. But others groups, such as the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Federation, agreed to support it in exchange for the opportunity to help shape the terms described above.

Though the final agreement left many dissatisfied, the participation of the environmental lobby was an important step. It forced legislators to address NAFTA’s ramifications outside the economic realm, and underscored one particular element of trade liberalization; it brings national environmental policy into the view of the international community.

When countries enter into free trade agreements, they become complicit in each other’s actions. They must collaborate on matters they cannot handle alone; the disposal of hazardous waste; saving endangered species in international waters; protecting the ozone layer; preserving natural resources. If the environment is a priority for one party, the other party must then live up to a higher set of standards.

In addition to this new accountability, some analysts suggest that free trade brings environmental benefits as a natural product of the economics involved. As agriculture moves from developed to developing countries, they argue, it becomes less technologically intensive, the land freed up in developed countries can ostensibly be used for conservation, and businesses in the developed countries will have incentive to create pollution-reducing technologies for export to other nations.

Ultimately, however, neither extreme position — that trade liberalization either dooms the environment or saves it — tells the whole story. Within free trade is the potential for either. Which scenario plays out is simply a matter of the amount of consideration given to the environment when forming the agreements.

David Vogel, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, offers that sentiment in his paper The Environment and International Trade, writing “trade liberalization does not by itself improve environmental standards. Rather it is the combination of freer trade plus the political influence of green pressure groups.” In the case of CAFTA, the necessary pressure was absent, and the result was an agreement with few safeguards for the environment.

A recent US/EU proposal, however, offers a more promising example. If enacted it would require all 151 members of the WTO to cut tariffs on a number of environmentally friendly products. Though problematic in its particulars, the proposal is, at least, a nod to the environmentalists of all countries involved.

With the increasing awareness of our planet’s precarious condition, and the increased political pressure that brings, we need to see more aggressive, and more abundant, green articles in our future free trade agreements. Given the economic clout of the US, a hard stance on environmental policy could go a long way towards securing the natural health of our planet.

In recent years, China has unveiled massive aid packages for African countries, forgiven enormous amounts of debt, and pumped funds into vast infrastructure projects. Around 750,000 Chinese workers live in Africa. Trade levels have jumped dramatically. In an indication of China’s growing role on the continent, World Bank head Robert Zoellick and Chinese leaders recently agreed to begin jointly funding development programs in Africa. The EU also cooperates with China on delivering aid to Africa.

The west has not wholeheartedly welcomed China’s involvement. In fact, one way to understand China’s policy in Africa is to look at the tensions between Europe and China on the question of development:

While China’s business-first approach is undermining EU efforts to boost sustainability and governance standards, its investments have benefited African economies. China has increasingly regarded Africa as an opportunity, while Europe has long regarded the continent as a burden.

Some have gone even further in their criticism of China, calling it a colonial menace. Others raise objections to the essentially amoral nature of the Chinese presence, especially China’s silence on issues related to Darfur, its willingness to supply weapons to the Sudanese government, and its relationship with dictators like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

But what is China really doing in Africa? Most agree that China is seeking raw materials for its industrialization and new markets for its exports. In this sense, China’s project is a neocolonial one. Indeed, many Africans themselves describe the situation in those terms. For example, despite increased trade levels, an influx of cheap Chinese goods has destroyed local industry, indicating that sometimes China takes much more than it gives. Others complain that the undervalued Chinese yuan keeps trade unequal.

Another indication of neocolonialism may be that China is pursuing political as well as economic power in Africa, setting up cultural institutions to spread the Chinese language, bringing African elites to study in China, and encouraging Chinese citizens to take vacations in countries like Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. China encourages cooperation between its military and African militaries, and has become a major weapons supplier to governments continent-wide. Here, again, China has an underlying motive: seeking allies, especially ones who will refuse to recognize Taiwanese independence and other disputed international matters concerning China.

But there is another side to China’s foreign policy that goes beyond neocolonialism. China’s willingness to forgive debts, and its interest in helping African countries develop their infrastructure, may generate substantial wealth for Africa. China’s human investment in bringing future African leaders to China to study and travel will also net huge payoffs for all concerned in the years to come. It is these aspects of China’s foreign policy in Africa that constitute pro-active development, which exists side by side, and sometimes in contradiction with, the neocolonial aspect.

African leaders who embrace ties to China are not only wooed by money: China wins friends by presenting itself as one developing nation eager to partner with others. Despite serious concerns about China’s motives, African leaders - and ordinary people in Africa - often welcome the Chinese while doubting Europeans and Americans. For many, China’s outreach offers a favorable alternative to what is seen as the west’s attempt to impose hegemony over African countries through the strings attached to aid packages. The Cold War history of American interventions in Africa, mostly in the form of American support for anticommunist leaders and movements, has also not been forgotten, and neither has the bloody legacy of European colonialism and independence struggles. And while China has looked the other way in Darfur, it must be admitted that Europe and America did the same with Rwanda and other incidents of chaos and tragedy in Africa.

Many African leaders feel that China respects them while America neglects them:

Africa has not been a priority for US foreign policy, other than counterterrorism cooperation with states in North and East Africa. Meanwhile, in some democratic African nations, the war in Iraq, the use of the term “empire” in relation to elements of US foreign policy, and the American focus on transparency, sometimes seen as meddling, genuinely anger average citizens. The White House has held few bilateral meetings with the continent’s most important players, and, according to a report on West Africa by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, it has cut back on American energy attachés to the continent, even as African oil becomes more important to the United States. At the same time, restrictive US policies on student visas have led many Africans studying abroad, historically a vanguard of pro-American sentiment, to look outside the United States for their education.

The Bush administration has downplayed concerns that China’s interest in Africa might threaten US interests, but business leaders have not been as reticent. At a November business summit in Cape Town, talk of China “dominated” and Americans “fretted that China was gaining not just a headstart but also an unfair advantage in Africa through its willingness to waive human rights issues in its business deals.”

The rhetoric of “human rights,” however, does not always work to America’s advantage:

But African delegates at the annual Corporate Council on Africa summit were unabashed. Mandisi Mpahlwa, South Africa’s trade and industry minister, said the US was subjective in its focus on human rights and asked why the issue was not raised, for example, about US businesses investing in China.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was caustic about the record of western businesses. Uganda received $1 per kg of coffee it grew, he said, before the beans were roasted and ground in London and sold for $20. “For each 1kg of coffee, we are donating $19. We have been doing this for a long time. But we are fighting it. We are going to change.”

LESSONS FOR THE US

America should pay close attention to China’s activities in Africa, not only because we have interests in Africa, and not only because human rights issues are at stake, but also because China’s foreign policy in Africa contains some important elements that American policies lack. China’s ability to project a spirit of partnership in development, rather than condescension, clearly resonates with Africans.

Western development models have come under fire for good reason: they have often achieved little, and in many cases have exacerbated suffering and hardship. China’s efforts at development may bring more of the same, and if reports of shoddy workmanship on construction projects are true, the infrastructure China builds in Africa may quickly, and literally, crumble. But the model of development that China is exploring may represent a new type of thinking: at its worst, one that ignores human rights violations in the interest of profit; but at its best, one that shuns Cold War logic of good and evil, and pure free trade logic of forcing open markets to make a quick buck no matter what the human cost, and instead follows foreign policy that hints at the creation of real wealth on both sides.

“Free” trade deals like NAFTA devastated Mexico’s domestic economy because these were unfair. Mexico gave up its protective tariffs on things like agricultural products while the U.S. didn’t, meaning that food grown more cheaply in Mexico could not compete with American grown produce. NAFTA put over 2 million Mexican farmers out of business. This “free” trade agreement also allowed multi-national corporations like Walmart, fueled by even cheaper Chinese labor, to drive out thousands of small Mexican businesses and depress Mexican wages.

Mexico simply can’t compete with places like China, so the American businesses that were supposed to set up shop in Mexico under NAFTA have largely moved on to cheaper locales. All this wonderful trade leaves Mexico with a glut of unemployed workers, mostly young men. These people then go looking for new jobs and a better life in the United States.

And they have little choice. While wages in Mexico fell 20% since 2001, immigrants can make as much as 13 times more in the U.S. It’s not hard to see why some people would risk their lives to come to this country. You’re talking about a 1300% pay raise!

Indeed, free trade and immigration go hand in hand. Free trade allows industry to take advantage of uneven prices in the global marketplace while at the same time forcing immigrants to take advantage of uneven wages. We are literally incentivizing illegal immigration. In the case of NAFTA, America gets the opportunity to sell our goods to Mexican consumers coupled with an influx of Mexican workers. Free trade means free movement of everything - goods, services, and labor.

This economic reality makes clear the contradictory nature of Republican positions on free trade and immigration. Plans to deport undocumented aliens, close the border, build a wall, and not give immigrants a clear path to citizenship stand in direct conflict with Republican faith in the free market. Immigration is the free market at work, working exactly how free trade advocates decided to set it up. Preaching free trade and then trying to stop immigration with “enforcement only” opens the economic floodgates and then attempts to stop the resulting flow with a legislative interventionist policy.

By framing the immigration debate as a values question and labeling these workers as criminals, Republicans attempt to mask the inherent conflict that exposes “free” trade for the swindle it really is: Free trade, as practiced by the United States, benefits the rich while screwing the poor. NAFTA allowed American companies to ship manual labor jobs to Mexico, flood Mexico with cheap Chinese made products, and keep huge subsidies for giant agribusinesses. This created mass immigration, which then allowed American companies to hire undocumented workers for low wages. The proposed fix? Build a wall. With people already willing to die to come to America, what makes anyone think this approach will work?

The reality is, American business loves illegal immigration. Undocumented immigrants are cheap, have no pesky minimum wage, and aren’t subject to the same labor protections as American citizens. Just like invading Iraq didn’t “fix” the terrorism problem, and locking up drug dealers didn’t “fix” the drug problem, building a wall will never “fix” the immigration problem, and that’s the point. America doesn’t want a fix for immigration, we want a scapegoat.

It’s an insidious strategy, as David Sirota points out:

The formula allows opportunists in Congress to both deflect heat away from the corporations underwriting their campaigns and preserve an exploitable pool of cheap labor for those same corporations. Additionally, these opportunists get to divide working-class constituencies along racial lines and vilify destitute illegal immigrant populations that don’t make campaign donations and therefore have no political voice whatsoever.

Even worse, the public has largely taken the bait. As of October, the majority of Americans held favorable views of trade and free markets while an even larger majority feel immigration should be further restricted.

The real solution seems fairly simple, though American business probably won’t like it. Immigrants need some kind of legal status so they can enjoy the protections of the American workforce. When undocumented immigrants are allowed to work without those protections, and when businesses aren’t punished for breaking the law, every American worker suffers. Strengthening immigrant workplace rights will even out the imbalance between citizens and non-citizens and strengthen the American workforce overall. Couple this domestic policy with a free trade policy that emphasizes worker protections abroad and eliminates exceptions and other tariff imbalances that destroyed the Mexican economy, and you have a pro-free trade, pro-immigration set of policies that work for the people, not the oligarchs.

Free trade is one thing. Allowing multi-national companies to exploit differences in national economies and prices for personal gain is quite another. The free market is indeed a wonderful thing, but any economist knows that there really is no such thing as a completely free market, and that free markets only promote efficiency, not fairness. Free trade practices can indeed increase economic flows between two countries, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if you want to decouple free trade from illegal immigration, you need to turn free trade into fair trade.

Anything less is a swindle and a scapegoat.