Globalisation Has Turned On Its Western Creators

From the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements of the US to the rise of populist politics in Europe, the globalisation backlash is everywhere.

by Jeremy Warner - December 7th, 2011 - London Telegraph

In real terms, Americans are on average no better off than they were 30 years ago; in Britain, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that our real disposable incomes are in the midst of a 14-year freeze. Vast tracts of gainful employment in textiles, potteries, shoe-making, machine tools and many other industries have disappeared, to be replaced by... well, not very much at all outside the now languishing financial services industry and the housing market.

The West’s competitive advantage, even in hi-tech industries such as pharmaceuticals and aerospace, is being fast whittled away too. The welfare and health entitlements to which we have become accustomed look ever more unaffordable, while the final-salary pensions that workers could once expect as reward for a lifetime of service are now confined to the public sector – and those too will surely be gone within 10 years. It is small wonder that the benefits of free trade are now so widely questioned.

Critics of globalisation, such as Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate in economics, used to focus on the supposed harm that Western-inspired trade liberalisation was inflicting on the developing world. Few would these days think this the correct way of looking at the problem.

The problem has become the reality - the developing world has refused to play fair. It steals our intellectual property, our ideas, our manufacturing capabilities, and then blocks our ability to sell services or products that we produce better at lower costs. Through tariffs, regulations, monetary manipulation and simple self serving greed, American products are denied fair competition and fair entry to foreign markets.

As noted in the article, "It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them [the proponents of globalization] that if you don’t provide Western consumers with jobs, they’ll be priced out of the market and the mother economy will wither and die." [Emphasis added] That is what is happening. The rich in America are not getting rich off the poor in America. They are getting rich off the poor in other countries. However the middle class in America are losing their jobs because the governments in the developing world are aggressively defending their interests against American interests.

In a bizarre twist of insanity, our own government is helping with this war against the middle class, as it passes laws to encourage the development of foreign economic interests. At the same time we do nothing to punish developing countries (China is an example) that manipulate their currency to assist in the destruction of our economy and block our products from their nations.

A good question is whether it is too late to turn this around. The only two Republican candidates who understand this dynamic, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, have both been rendered unelectable by elites in the Repubican Party. The two candidates who are leading, Romney and Gingrich, are both enamored of the globalisation delusion.

The Republican Primary is not over - yet a disastrous future for America has already been assured.