Most liberals already know the destructive side of globalization. It has allowed multinational corporations to play governments off against each other, rewarding nations with the lowest wages, weakest environmental protections, and flimsiest standards of workers’ rights. But despite its poetic, nostalgic appeal, Wendell Barry style localism is not going to win any national elections for us. We need to have our own vision of globalization.
In the 2004 primaries, several Democrats already did. The idea was called fair trade. Howard Dean put it this way in an interview with the Concord Monitor
Globalization is here to stay whether we like it or not, but the rules for globalization are not. Both NAFTA and the WTO help large multinational corporations but ignore the needs for the people who work for them. In order to make globalization work we also have to globalize worker protection, labor rights, environmental rights and human rights. Free trade won't work under the present circumstances.
The model for liberal globalization is the European Union. As it expands, the EU brings greater freedom and a higher quality of life to the poorer countries it absorbs. The EU pulls up the standards of countries like Poland and Hungary, rather than pulling down the standards of Germany and France. The World Trade Organization (or some new organization) could work the same way: It could be a club of civilized nations. In order to join the club and get favored access to its rich markets, you need to live up to civilized standards – protect the environment, guarantee workers’ rights, allow certain basic political freedoms, and so on.
Republicans have worked for decades to frame the alternative to globalization as “protectionism” (in which the government rewards inefficient but well-connected special interests by banning competing imports). Protectionism is corrupt by its very nature: political hacks and rich lobbyists (union and corporate alike) work hand-in-hand to keep you from buying cheaper, better products made overseas. Both the American consumer and deserving, hard-working foreign laborers are victimized. This framing has been so well established that Kerry did not dare to challenge it head-on. Though I dimly remember hearing the phrase “fair trade” once or twice, Kerry highlighted specific problems with conservative globalization (like outsourcing) without presenting a sweeping liberal alternative.
But we have an alternative. If Indonesians can make cheaper sneakers because their workers are happy with wages that Americans would refuse, then that’s just capitalism and we have to live with it. But if Indonesian sneakers are cheaper because their factories are allowed to pollute, their workers can’t organize, and their courts value workers’ lives cheaply – that’s different. We need to make the public appreciate this difference, so that fair trade doesn’t vanish in 2008 the way it did in 2004.
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