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by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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Chinese Protectionism Offends Our Protectionism, Oh My!
We’re now entering a new era of profound hypocrisy from global neoliberal capitalists.
Today’s Globe and Mail had a cover story about China hoarding raw materials for infrastructure development while getting all protectionist with export controls to keep those materials from getting to the industrialized world, where presumably we deserve to have them more than the Chinese who happen to be able to afford them, what with their massive positive trade balance with the rapidly impoverishing United States.
Here are two more of China’s crimes: their new Buy China policy and new policies where “Chinese manufacturers get preferential access to [infrastructure materials] at cheap prices, forcing the rest of the world to pay more.”
While North America and Europe are confronting China’s new protectionism at the WTO, we learn that—shock!—we’re doing the same thing. In the same article, with no hint of irony, we read that “most industrialized countries have applied policies that can affect trade flows…such as toughened Buy American rules in the United States.”
And why not? In a global recession, stimulating the economy by spending money domestically—even with borrowing billions—contributes to a multiplier effect that enhances people’s incomes and economic stability instead of bleeding profits to off-shore tax havens where many global corporations are legally based.
Then we get more hypocritical indignation: China’s stance is “’part of the game that gets played in China,’ said Peter Morici, former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission….‘It’s illegal and it violates WTO rules.’”
While protectionist measures do violate WTO neoliberal free trade agreements, there is nothing “illegal” about it. The WTO is not law, but a draconian clearinghouse of voluntary neoliberal agreements with binding penalties with which richer countries pummel poorer, more desperate countries.
Brazil violated intellectual property provisions when it broke international patent agreements to produce cheap HIV/AIDS drugs to keep people from dying. If that’s illegal, they’re certainly my kind of criminals.
Brazil and China’s actions are merely violating voluntary contractual agreements. They may endure penalties, or maybe not, what with the WTO losing teeth by the month. But sovereign nations are still sovereign nations with the right to develop internal policies. If those policies conflict with their WTO obligations, something will have to give.
My guess is that with the horribly stalled WTO negotiations, the global neoliberal trade regime, will continue to atrophy as peak oil undermines the affordability of global production chains.
So what we see now is a different kind of race: not a race to the bottom, but a race for states to empower their capacity to be bioregionally self-sufficient.
And if you think you’ll hear fewer stories of global economic protectionism, you need to go back to the 20th century because you won’t make it in this century with that framework.
via China hoarding building blocks to recovery, U.S. charges – The Globe and Mail.