Laws against globalization.... 2920

Straydog

No -India opted for signing the WTO treaty and opening the economy to the world outside BEFORE knowing what it would lead to. We had a balance of payments crisis and the IMF arm-twisted the govt saying if you want us to bail out -open up markets and sign the WTO agreement etc.. The US govt is one of the main lenders of the IMF and so you can conclude the US govt forced India into it. Whether it would lead to greater GDP growth and that the industry would adapt instead of get dissolutioned by MNCs is something that can only be said now in hindsight. This knowledge wasn't available to policy makers or to you in 1991.

yeah -it is possible to tell elected representatives what you want. For that, you need to know more about how things work and what will be the consequences of implementing your ideas.

if you have a definite idea of what you want to do wrt free trade and more importantly build a nation-wide consensus -it might be possible to get your ideas implemented. Globalization comes with some pros and some cons. If you are willing to live without the pros of globalization and insist on doing so -it should be possible to compel politicians to follow your line of thinking. I mean -I read AG advise politicians that they should have the political will to see through free trade against the backlash of public opinion. The reason why he said so is because public opinion has the potential to derail it.

it means that the voting population of one country cannot mandate a certain agreement on everybody else. Your opinion counts only in your country whereas trade agreements span across countries -where you cannot force your ideas. So, governments agree to some quid-pro-quo and abide by them.

every govt and vested interests within want to subvert agreements using one means or the other. But the reason why these agreements exist is to ensure free trade survives subversion. GWB jr wanted to ban import of cheap steel so that steel workers could retain their jobs. But the WTO would have forced penalties or trading partners would have dishonoured their commitments if the US had not honoured its.

yeah -the US is kind of the prime mover of free trade-WTO and just about every other country is dragging its feet on one issue or the other. snip depends on whether you can crease a political awareness of how free trade impacts lives. The more organized voters are -the better chance they have of ensuring that public interest prevails.

which is what I must have told you before. Once you let the genie out of the bottle -it is going to be really difficult to put it back in. The opinions against globalization would have been more approproate 10-15 yrs back -if a U turn on that was desired. Right now, either you need to live with it or fine-tune policy so that it benefits those who are most vulnerable to its consequences.

regards -kamal