Globaliseringen: Frihandel gjør rike land rikere og fattige land fattigere

Fra Global Research.
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Utdrag:
De-industrialisation.
"We saw in an earlier post that advanced nations subsidise their businesses. When big, subsidised corporations from rich countries compete against unprotected, smaller businesses in poor countries, the end result is that the smaller businesses go bust. When Jamaica was forced to open up its trade to big overseas corporations, subsidised, powdered milk from the US was cheaper than fresh milk from local cows. Many milk sellers in Jamaica went out of business, almost overnight.(7) When Haiti was forced to open up its markets, rice growers and poultry farmers went out of business. After local producers have been eliminated, those countries become dependent on food exports from advanced nations. This is known as ‘food dependency’ and is a deliberate goal of US policy.(8)

In the Ivory Coast, the chemical, textile, automobile and shoe industries collapsed. In Kenya, the sugar, tobacco, beverages and textiles industries have struggled to survive. When Nigeria opened up to foreign competition, 35 textile mills closed and 200,000 workers lost their jobs.(9) This is not limited to a handful of examples. This process has led to the de-industrialisation of many countries – the opposite of what they need to do to become advanced nations.

Free Trade is Propaganda to Conceal Corporate Exploitation.

Free trade and the free movement of money have the following real purposes(11):

  • They allow investors to move money freely.
  • They allow investors and companies to set up complex international structures to manipulate prices and profits.
  • They enable companies from advanced nations to extract raw materials in other countries on unfair terms.
  • They enable companies from advanced nations to sell in other countries, eliminating local production.
  • They enable companies from advanced nations to access cheap labour in poor countries.

When discussing a trade agreement between the US and Columbia, one commentator summarized it as follows: “What actually happens is that jobs leave the richer nation and go to the country where workers are paid a pittance, while goods from the richer country flood the poorer, pushing out indigenous production”.

Negotiators often use the term ‘trade agreements’, when what they really mean is ‘agreements that give investors more power than governments.’ The combination of trade policies and the integration of poor countries into a global system of trade is sometimes called globalisation. One critical commentator said: “globalization is what we in the third world have for several centuries called colonization".

Properly Regulated Trade Works Really Well.

It is certainly true that some countries have used unnecessary regulations to enrich people with government connections. The former British Ambassador, Craig Murray, has written about his experiences in Uzbekistan, where the dictator enriched himself and his friends by controlling many industries.(14) Other countries have unnecessary bureaucracy, which creates opportunities for bribery and corruption. However, these are not arguments for free trade. They are arguments for properly regulated trade.

A small group of countries have made spectacular progress in the last 75 years, since 1945. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Israel were actively assisted by the US because they were useful to the US for political purposes.(15) They are often held up as examples of rapid development using free trade, but this is propaganda. Representatives from those governments, together with numerous academic studies, have shown that these countries did not follow free-market policies. They did what other advanced nations did to become successful. They protected developing industries against competition from overseas, and they provided government assistance to key industries and exporters. The same is now true of China".