More Insight on the Perils of Globalization

He may be best known for defining the ABC's of globalization in just one line:

“democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three but never have all three simultaneously and in full”

In the case of Canada our leaders have chosen national sovereignty as the sacrificial lamb for the pursuit of globalism.

The Financial Times' Martin Wolf had this to add:

"...Consider the disappointing recent performance of global capitalism, not least the shock of the financial crisis and its devastating effect on trust in the elites in charge of our political and economic arrangements. Given all this, confidence in an enduring marriage between liberal democracy and global capitalism seems unwarranted.

"So what might take its place? One possibility would be the rise of a global plutocracy and so in effect the end of national democracies. As in the Roman empire, the forms of republics might endure but the reality would be gone.

"An opposite alternative would be the rise of illiberal democracies or outright plebiscitary dictatorships, in which the elected ruler exercises control over both the state and capitalists. This is happening in Russia and Turkey. Controlled national capitalism would then replace global capitalism. Something rather like that happened in the 1930s. It is not hard to identify western politicians who would love to go in exactly this direction.

"...Meanwhile, those of us who wish to preserve both liberal democracy and global capitalism must confront serious questions. One is whether it makes sense to promote further international agreements that tightly constrain national regulatory discretion in the interests of existing corporations. My view increasingly echoes that of Prof Lawrence Summers of Harvard, who has argued that “international agreements [should] be judged not by how much is harmonised or by how many barriers are torn down but whether citizens are empowered”. Trade brings gains but cannot be pursued at all costs."

Now Dani Rodrik,  professor of  international economy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, warns that today's free trade pacts have precious little to do with trade.

When trade agreements were largely about import tariffs, negotiated exchange of market access generally produced lower import barriers – an example of the benefits of lobbies acting as counterweights to one another. But there are certainly plenty of examples of international collusion among special interests as well.

Such perverse cases have proliferated more recently. Newer trade agreements incorporate rules on “intellectual property,” capital flows, and investment protections that are mainly designed to generate and preserve profits for financial institutions and multinational enterprises at the expense of other legitimate policy goals. These rules provide special protections to foreign investors that often come into conflict with public health or environmental regulations. They make it harder for developing countries to access technology, manage volatile capital flows, and diversify their economies through industrial policies.

Rodrik sums it up - don't cry over dead trade agreements.