Protectionism - An Unneccessary Evil
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
To help the common masses understand better the evils of protectionism, here goes:-
Country Korvenia is self sufficient in rice cultivation and production. It costs only $1 for a 5kg packet of rice to be produced, but is sold at $5 for a 5kg packet to Korvenians, making those in the rice industry rich with the 'marked up', leading to excesses and complacency in productivity.
Country Bruviapore is equally self sufficient, but productive, and has excess rice to sell at $3kg per 5kg packet.
It attempts to sell to Korvenia, but korvenian rice lobby groups blocks such sales with import taxes, etc, thru their government, resulting in Bruviapore rice being sold at $8 per 5kg packet, with $5 each packet being paid to Korvenian govt.
Korvenian consumers are thus the losers, stuck with buying rice at $5/ 5kg packet from their own producers.
Thus, in its simplest form, protectionism kills productivity, enterprise and creativity in the industrial and biz process.
It only protects those who benefits from the 'marked -up' - the CEOs, suppliers, distributors, Union and hedg fund operators, NOT the farmers or consumers.
With the latest Apec decision to remove 'protectionism, it means lesser import taxes and tarrifs, or none at all. In this climate, people everywhere are not spending anyway, benefiting not even the protectionist groups.
Therefore, with trade barriers removed, productive and cheaper manufactured goods will be acceptable to attract consumers to spend, circulating money and promoting growth.
This is a significant and important developement, which will directly help our export industry greatly as well as attract investors to set up production on our shores.
It will provide jobs for us all and increase our treasury for social spending. With our nation holding the Apec chair next year, may we push hard to remove this unneccessary evil call protectionism in our planet and help save the world.
Yah right, Singapore is a rice producing country, and your post is so illuminating.
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Originally posted by AndrewPKYap:
Yah right, Singapore is a rice producing country, and your post is so illuminating.
If anyone found my posts 'simplistic', it was intentional. i am not dealing with scholars right now here on this forum, but common laymen. Already, the above poster and some other more dense had shown they could not even understand simple 'examples'.See what I mean?
Anyway, each his/her own opinions. Your had your say, i had mine. To go further is to complicate a simple issue. At the end of the day, may my fellow citizens be able to distinguish for themselves with both head and stomachs on the evils of protectionism as well as the flaws with the defense of such regressive systems.
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
If anyone found my posts 'simplistic', it was intentional. i am not dealing with scholars right now here on this forum, but common laymen. Already, the above poster and some other more dense had shown they could not even understand simple 'examples'.See what I mean?
Anyway, each his/her own opinions. Your had your say, i had mine. To go further is to complicate a simple issue. At the end of the day, may my fellow citizens be able to distinguish for themselves with both head and stomachs on the evils of protectionism as well as the flaws with the defense of such regressive systems.
Intentional or not...Please don't come and poison the simplistic minds of our fellow youngsters with your simplistic nonsense.
Do exercise some discrimination even during free speech.
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Originally posted by jojobeach:
Intentional or not...Please don't come and poison the simplistic minds of our fellow youngsters with your simplistic nonsense.
Do exercise some discrimination even during free speech.
If educating and illuminating the minds of my fellow citizens is 'poison', then stupidity must be your forte. -
You are voicing out how you look at things, it is definitely not "illuminating".
Interesting, yes. But educating and illuminating ? No.
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What are some bad points of protectionism?
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
If educating and illuminating the minds of my fellow citizens is 'poison', then stupidity must be your forte.You pointed out that you wanted to educate and illuminate the minds of people. Well, I presented evidence, real-life evidence that contradicts your textbook arguments. Are you being an "educated person" if you just ignore it? You're trying to engage in dialogue with the common laymen right? Then act like it and respond.
It is so ironic that you profess to be open-minded when your behaviour just shows otherwise.
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...IMF medicine almost always includes demands to privatize state industries, to slash public spending even on health and education, devalue the national currency against the dollar, and open the country to free flow of international capital-both in and, especially, out.
First the IMF demands the government in question sign a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the IMF, in which it agrees to a list of "conditionalities", the pre-condition for getting any penny of IMF aid.
Under today's globalized free capital markets, banks do not invest in a country that does not have the IMF seal of approval. So the IMF role is far more than giving some emergency loan. It determines if a country gets any money from any source at all-World Bank, private banks and other.
The conditions of an IMF deal are always the same. Privatization of state industries is top on the list. The effect of privatization with a cheap Peso or Rouble currency is that foreign dollar investors are able to buy up the prime assets of a country dirt cheap.
Often the politicians involved in the country get corrupted by the lure of under-the-table deals in privatizing their national assets. Foreign multinationals can grab profitable mining, oil, or other national treasures with their dollars.
The case of the Yeltsin government in Russia is classic, with dollar billionaires emerging overnight on the looting of national assets via IMF-dictated privatization. The Clinton Administration backed the process fully. They knew it turned Russia into a dollar zone, and that was the intent.
The second demand of the IMF is that a country liberalize, that is open, its financial and banking markets to foreign investors. This allows high-profile speculators like George Soros or Citibank or Credit Suisse to come into a country, run up asset prices in a speculation, take huge profits, as in Thailand in the mid-1990s, and quickly sell, then exit with huge gains, as the local economy collapses behind them. Then Western multinationals can come in after, and take prime assets at very low cost.
This is what happened to Asia in the 1990s. The IMF and US Treasury, which actually determines US IMF policy, began strong pressure on the fast-growing East Asia "Tiger" economies in 1993, to remove national controls on capital flows. They argued it would help Asia get large sums of money to invest.
What it did was give US pension funds and big banks a huge new market for speculation.
Too much money flowed in, and an unhealthy real estate bubble grew. It burst when Soros and other US speculators deliberately pulled the plug in 1997, triggering the Asia crisis. The end result was that for the first time, Asian economies were forced to turn to the IMF to be rescued.
But the IMF did not "rescue" any Asian economy in 1998. It rescued international banks and hedge fund speculators. In Indonesia, the IMF demanded the government raise interest rates to 80%, on the argument that would keep foreign investors from leaving, and stabilize the situation.
In fact, as critics like Joseph Stiglitz charged at the time, the IMF interest rate demands guaranteed a full-blown collapse of the Indonesian and other Asian banking systems.
Once the IMF got control of South Korea, one of the strongest industrial economies in the world, it demanded breakup of large industry conglomerates, charging "corruption" and "crony capitalism."
In fact, Washington hoped to weaken a growing competitor and open the door for US companies like GM or Ford to take over. In part it worked, until Korea and other regional economies were strong enough to re-impose national controls.
Malaysia openly defied the IMF demands and imposed currency controls during the crisis. The damage to Malaysia was minimal as a result, a great embarrassment to the IMF...
http://www.serendipity.li/hr/imf
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Originally posted by freedomclub:
You pointed out that you wanted to educate and illuminate the minds of people. Well, I presented evidence, real-life evidence that contradicts your textbook arguments. Are you being an "educated person" if you just ignore it? You're trying to engage in dialogue with the common laymen right? Then act like it and respond.
It is so ironic that you profess to be open-minded when your behaviour just shows otherwise.
Sigh....FC, why the hostility and personal attacks? We both are on the same page with hatred for 'corporate greed'. But where we differ is that you, under the same breath claims and allude that corporate greed and corruption gives citizens and workers jobs thruprotectionism. Re-read what you had written please!
What 'real world' examples did you give that holds water in defense of protectionism?
Rape of resources by coroporate westerners and crooked tribal leaders in Africa? And it can protect jobs and welfare of the raped?
African states failed not because of free trade. They failed because of corruption and mismanagement. Their own tribal leaders were more rapacious than the colonnists whom gave them indepence. Please get your facts right!
$25b to protect inefficent autocarmakers mgmt? Just because they hold 2 million workers hostage? Whom taxpayer's $25b could have been used to help 190million other workers survive in competitive industries in US?
I had tried to not show up your rational inadequecies, and sought to avoid confrontation. I trust my fellow citizens that they are not imbeciles and will be able to see where your rationality ends and clouded judgement dominate in your posts.
I suggest that you lay off personal attacks, calm down and present your defense of protectionism in a logical and precise manner, befitting a civilised discourse fit for human consumption than a taiwan style free for all nonsensical theaterics that boost your personal delusions of inflated ego but help acheive nothing.
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
Sigh....FC, why the hostility and personal attacks? We both are on the same page with hatred for 'corporate greed'. But where we differ is that you, under the same breath claims and allude that corporate greed and corruption gives citizens and workers jobs thruprotectionism. Re-read what you had written please!
What 'real world' examples did you give that holds water in defense of protectionism?
Rape of resources by coroporate westerners and crooked tribal leaders in Africa? And it can protect jobs and welfare of the raped?
African states failed not because of free trade. They failed because of corruption and mismanagement. Their own tribal leaders were more rapacious than the colonnists whom gave them indepence. Please get your facts right!
$25b to protect inefficent autocarmakers mgmt? Just because they hold 2 million workers hostage? Whom taxpayer's $25b could have been used to help 190million other workers survive in competitive industries in US?
I had tried to not show up your rational inadequecies, and sought to avoid confrontation. I trust my fellow citizens that they are not imbeciles and will be able to see where your rationality ends and clouded judgement dominate in your posts.
I suggest that you lay off personal attacks, calm down and present your defense of protectionism in a logical and precise manner, befitting a civilised discourse fit for human consumption than a taiwan style free for all nonsensical theaterics that boost your personal delusions of inflated ego but help acheive nothing.
Oh boy.. your narrow mindedness is astounding.
No, your fellow citizens are not imbeciles.. you are.
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Originally posted by Poh Ah Pak:
...IMF medicine almost always includes demands to privatize state industries, to slash public spending even on health and education, devalue the national currency against the dollar, and open the country to free flow of international capital-both in and, especially, out.
First the IMF demands the government in question sign a secret Memorandum of Understanding with the IMF, in which it agrees to a list of "conditionalities", the pre-condition for getting any penny of IMF aid.
Under today's globalized free capital markets, banks do not invest in a country that does not have the IMF seal of approval. So the IMF role is far more than giving some emergency loan. It determines if a country gets any money from any source at all-World Bank, private banks and other.
The conditions of an IMF deal are always the same. Privatization of state industries is top on the list. The effect of privatization with a cheap Peso or Rouble currency is that foreign dollar investors are able to buy up the prime assets of a country dirt cheap.
Often the politicians involved in the country get corrupted by the lure of under-the-table deals in privatizing their national assets. Foreign multinationals can grab profitable mining, oil, or other national treasures with their dollars.
The case of the Yeltsin government in Russia is classic, with dollar billionaires emerging overnight on the looting of national assets via IMF-dictated privatization. The Clinton Administration backed the process fully. They knew it turned Russia into a dollar zone, and that was the intent.
The second demand of the IMF is that a country liberalize, that is open, its financial and banking markets to foreign investors. This allows high-profile speculators like George Soros or Citibank or Credit Suisse to come into a country, run up asset prices in a speculation, take huge profits, as in Thailand in the mid-1990s, and quickly sell, then exit with huge gains, as the local economy collapses behind them. Then Western multinationals can come in after, and take prime assets at very low cost.
This is what happened to Asia in the 1990s. The IMF and US Treasury, which actually determines US IMF policy, began strong pressure on the fast-growing East Asia "Tiger" economies in 1993, to remove national controls on capital flows. They argued it would help Asia get large sums of money to invest.
What it did was give US pension funds and big banks a huge new market for speculation.
Too much money flowed in, and an unhealthy real estate bubble grew. It burst when Soros and other US speculators deliberately pulled the plug in 1997, triggering the Asia crisis. The end result was that for the first time, Asian economies were forced to turn to the IMF to be rescued.
But the IMF did not "rescue" any Asian economy in 1998. It rescued international banks and hedge fund speculators. In Indonesia, the IMF demanded the government raise interest rates to 80%, on the argument that would keep foreign investors from leaving, and stabilize the situation.
In fact, as critics like Joseph Stiglitz charged at the time, the IMF interest rate demands guaranteed a full-blown collapse of the Indonesian and other Asian banking systems.
Once the IMF got control of South Korea, one of the strongest industrial economies in the world, it demanded breakup of large industry conglomerates, charging "corruption" and "crony capitalism."
In fact, Washington hoped to weaken a growing competitor and open the door for US companies like GM or Ford to take over. In part it worked, until Korea and other regional economies were strong enough to re-impose national controls.
Malaysia openly defied the IMF demands and imposed currency controls during the crisis. The damage to Malaysia was minimal as a result, a great embarrassment to the IMF...
http://www.serendipity.li/hr/imf
Thank you poh for your wall of text instead of your own original thoughts. At least better than the moronic ex-citizen living US who offers nothing except provocative insults.I only ask you these in the hope that you will learn to differentiate between slaving to others' opinions but instead develope your own critical analytic skill:-
1. Is it fair that msians can invest and withdraw funds anytime anywhere, but others investing in msia cannot withdraw their funds anytime?
I more or less can guess your answer, either way which will only support the view that protectionism is an unnecessary evil.
2. If capital controls are so good, why isn't Msia still using it?
3. Did capital control actually work? or was it a general recovery in asia that worked instead, because other asian states did not adopt msian measures and did no worse.
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
Thank you poh for your wall of text instead of your own original thoughts. At least better than the moronic ex-citizen living US who offers nothing except provocative insults.I only ask you these in the hope that you will learn to differentiate between slaving to others' opinions but instead develope your own critical analytic skill:-
1. Is it fair that msians can invest and withdraw funds anytime anywhere, but others investing in msia cannot withdraw their funds anytime?
I more or less can guess your answer, either way which will only support the view that protectionism is an unnecessary evil.
2. If capital controls are so good, why isn't Msia still using it?
3. Did capital control actually work? or was it a general recovery in asia that worked instead, because other asian states did not adopt msian measures and did no worse.
Mr Xtreyier,
Are you too cowardly to tell everyone here who that ex-citizen is ? Yes it takes guts to not beat around the bush.
Your postings are a reflection of what goes on in your head.
What goes on in your head defines what kind of person you are.
If you think you can come here and talk like a primary school student yet expect others to treat you like a degree graduate.... I say.. GROW UP.
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Complacency and hence failure to improve and compete?
What are some bad points of protectionism?
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Thank you poh for your wall of text instead of your own original thoughts.
So what do you think of the arguments of the wall of text?
African states failed not because of free trade. They failed because of corruption and mismanagement. Their own tribal leaders were more rapacious than the colonnists whom gave them indepence. Please get your facts right!
Is there evidence to show your claim is true?
...In October 1979, a dramatic shock occurred for the debtor countries. Overnight their cheap dollar loans cost them 300% more interest charge. Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve Bank in the US, unilaterally changed US interest policy to force the dollar higher against other currencies.
The effect was to raise US interest rates 300% and rates in the London bank market by even more. The bank loans to Argentina and other countries had been made in "floating" rate agreements. If the key international rate in the London bank market, LIBOR, was low, Argentina would pay a low rate on its dollar loans. But when it suddenly rose 300% in 1979-1980, many countries suddenly faced a payments crisis.
It took until 1982 for the crisis to reach default level. At that point, Washington demanded the IMF be brought in to police a debt collection process on developing debtor nations. This came to be called the Third World Debt Crisis.
The impression was created that countries like Argentina were guilty for mismanagement. In reality, whatever political corruption may have existed in the debtor countries, the corruption of the IMF system and the petrodollar recycling was far greater. The Volcker interest rate shock completed the package of destruction of living standards on behalf of dollar debts...
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Complacency and hence failure to improve and compete?
My view is that infant industries should have certain level of protection.
After they have developed to a certain level, the protective rules can be dropped.
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I agree. Question is what infant industries to protect..
For government to protect such industries, government must take a bet, and be prepared to lose the bet...
My view is that infant industries should have certain level of protection.
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Originally posted by xtreyier:
Sigh....FC, why the hostility and personal attacks? We both are on the same page with hatred for 'corporate greed'. But where we differ is that you, under the same breath claims and allude that corporate greed and corruption gives citizens and workers jobs thruprotectionism. Re-read what you had written please!
What 'real world' examples did you give that holds water in defense of protectionism?
Rape of resources by coroporate westerners and crooked tribal leaders in Africa? And it can protect jobs and welfare of the raped?
African states failed not because of free trade. They failed because of corruption and mismanagement. Their own tribal leaders were more rapacious than the colonnists whom gave them indepence. Please get your facts right!
....I suggest that you lay off personal attacks, calm down and present your defense of protectionism in a logical and precise manner, befitting a civilised discourse fit for human consumption than a taiwan style free for all nonsensical theaterics that boost your personal delusions of inflated ego but help acheive nothing.
You have not presented anything except theoretical scenarios, which is the rice producing country etc (which I've obviously read). It works great in the textbook, but when it comes down to the real world, things are horribly different. I do not believe I've engaged in any personal attacks, merely trying to get you to look at the evidence I presented. Look at Ecuador, just one of the many examples (but it doesnt seem like you even looked at- otherwise, you would have responded to it). During the 1970s, Africa was almost self-sufficient in food. Now, they're about 70% reliant on foreign imports. When fuel prices spike, like during the first half of 2008, people cant get food to eat. And the riots break out. Why? Because Big Agri (western corporations) barge in there and destroy domestic capacity so that they can earn more profits. As I've said, when corporations place profits/power above human concerns, its merely makes society more inhumane. Economics is just a pile of deceptive words like "economic efficiency" and "pareto optimality" that doesn't not address the human dimension.
It is because "free trade" breaks down barriers to corporations that they are able to infiltrate Third World countries and ruin peoples' lives. Malawi was thriving in the 1960/70s (I think), and they sustained themselves by growing their own food. Because the Malawi government provided free fertiliser, the country could export food. But the WTO and its western cronies didnt like that at all, because it meant lesser profits because of Malawi food independence. So the WB/IMF got the Malawi government to curtail fertiliser give-outs and that resulted in food productivity plunging so that Monsato/Cargil could jump in, destroy domestic production and get the Malawi people to become corporate dependencies.
Look, more real-world evidence for protectionism. Protection from western corporations looking to make more money off human suffering. During the Cold War, Latin American countries like Guatemala, Chile and Panama, even Iran, were messed up by the CIA because their leader implemented humanitarian reforms such as distributing land to the peasants. Of course, the western corporations like United Fruit in Guatemala, for instance, didnt like that. They brought in the CIA and propped up dictators that oppressed the people.
"Free trade" is just semantic deception for western corporations to exploit the native people and to make even more profits. Now, compared to the theoretical increase in wealth (besides in the age of globalisation, the income gap is increasing) that the theory of comparative advantage offers, I believe my evidence is more than enough to tear it to shreads. Why cling on to non-real theories and perpetrate misery when you can recognise the sufferning that "free trade" causes in the name of profits? Is this not "logical"? I'm beginning to think that your defence of textbook economics serves to fuel the egoistic academia inside you, disregarding all other real-world evidence.
I could have gone deeper, but not before you recognise how inapplicable such economic theory is in the corporate-dominated real world. Ponder on this, (war criminal) Henry Kissinger said, "Control oil, and you control nations. Control food, and you control people." (thats why my examples are so pertinent to food)
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...Noam Chomsky: The New York Times had an article by its economic correspondent in its magazine section a couple weeks ago about Obama's economic programs.
He talked about Reagan as the model of passionate commitment to free markets and reduction of the role of the state, and so on … Where are these people?
Reagan was the most protectionist president in post-war American history.
In fact, more protectionist than all others combined. He virtually doubled protective barriers. He brought in the Pentagon to develop the "factory of the future" to teach backward American management how to catch up on the Japanese lead in production. SEMATECH ("Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology") was formed.
If it weren't for Reagan's protectionism and calling in of state power, we would not have a steel industry, or an automobile industry, or a semi-conductor industry or whatever they protected. They reindustrialized America by protectionism and state intervention.
All of this is washed away by propaganda as though it never happened.
It is very interesting to look at a place like MIT, which was right at the center of these developments. My department -- you're teaching a course in the Military Industrial Complex -- my department is an example of it.
I came here in the mid-50's. I don't know the difference between a radio and a tape recorder, but I was in the electronics lab. I was perhaps the one person who refused to get clearance on principle. Not that it made any difference; everything was open anyway.
The electronics lab, along with the closely connected Lincoln labs, was just developing the basis of the modern high- tech economy. In those days, the computer was the size of this set of offices.
By the time they finally got computers down to the size of a marketable main frame, some of the directors of the project pulled out and formed DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), the first main frame producer.
IBM was in there, at the government's expense, learning how to move from punch cards to electronic computers. By the early l960's IBM was capable of producing its own computers, but no one could buy them. They were too expensive. So they were bought by the National Security Agency. Bell Labs did develop transistors.
That is about the only example you can think of a significant part of the high-tech system which came out of private enterprise. But that is a joke too! They worked on technology. Their transistor producer was Western Electric, who could not sell them on the market; they were too expensive. So the government bought about 100 percent of advanced transistors.
Finally, of course, all of this gets to the point where you can market them privately. It was not until the 1980's after 30 years of development essentially in the state sector that these things became marketable commodities and Bill Gates could get rich.
The Internet was the same thing. I was here when they were starting to work on the Internet. It was not until 1995 that it was privatized, after 30 years. If you look at the funding at MIT, in the 1950s and 1960's it was almost entirely Pentagon.
For a very simple reason, the cutting edge of the economy was electronics based. A good cover for developing an electronics-based economy was the Pentagon. You sort of frighten people into thinking the Russians are coming, so they pay their taxes and their children and grandchildren have computers.
Through the 70's and 80's funding has been shifting to NIH (National Institutes of Health). Why? Because the cutting edge of the economy is becoming biology-based. So, therefore, the state sector is shifting its priorities to developing biology-based industries. All of this is going on with accolades to the Free Market. You don't know whether to laugh or cry...
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There is a lot of bullshit with free trade and free market theory in my view.
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If so, why promote free trade?
So that the corporate giants of this world can corner the gobal market?
There is a lot of bullshit with free trade and free market theory in my view.
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Is that so hard to figure out?
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The US Role in Haiti’s Food Riots
...The problem really is, is that the United States and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, all of which we, the United States, dominate, have for the last twenty-five, thirty years have insisted that in order to get the loans, which Haiti and these other countries, agricultural countries, need, in order to get those loans, Haiti had to change their economic system so that their country was open to competition from other countries on agriculture, trade, a number of other things.
It’s so clear in the case of rice. As you said, thirty years ago, Haiti imported almost no rice, was an exporter of sugar and other things. Today, Haiti imports nearly all of its rice. It even imports sugar, even though it was the sugar-growing capital of the Caribbean. And the reason is, is that the powers that be said, in order to get these loans, which they need desperately to be able to survive, that they had to open up their markets to competition.
Well, it turns out that the competition doesn’t do the same thing. And the main competition is the United States. So at this point, the United States exports over 200 million metric tons of rice every year to Haiti.
And they’re actually like our third biggest customer. And the reason is that our rice is cheaper than the rice that they could grow there themselves, because our rice is so heavily subsidized.
A billion dollars a year of taxpayer money goes to rice farmers in the United States, plus we have a tariff. We have three different subsidies, three different programs that do that, plus we have a tariff that adds between three and 24 percent protection for our rice farmers.
And as a result, the rich and powerful country of the United States, along with other rich and powerful countries in the world, have just really bullied these small countries into accepting our rice.
And as the rice from the United States came in—they even called it “Miami rice” and some call it the invasion of Miami rice—that the rice flooded in at low or below cost—free or below cost and destroyed the ability of farmers in Haiti to be able to grow rice.
And as a consequence, the country now depends totally on imported rice. Cost of import—cost of rice around the world has gone up over 100 percent since January...
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How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have Been Re-Written to Justify Neo-Liberal CapitalismThere is currently great pressure on developing countries to adopt a set of “good policies” and “good institutions” – such as liberalisation of trade and investment and strong patent law – to foster their economic development. When some developing countries show reluctance in adopting them, the proponents of this recipe often find it difficult to understand these countries’ stupidity in not accepting such a tried and tested recipe for development.
After all, they argue, these are the policies and the institutions that the developed countries had used in the past in order to become rich. Their belief in their own recommendation is so absolute that in their view it has to be imposed on the developing countries through strong bilateral and multilateral external pressures, even when these countries don’t want them.
Naturally, there have been heated debates on whether these recommended policies and institutions are appropriate for developing countries. However, curiously, even many of those who are sceptical of the applicability of these policies and institutions to the developing countries take it for granted that these were the policies and the institutions that were used by the developed countries when they themselves were developing countries.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the historical fact is that the rich countries did not develop on the basis of the policies and the institutions that they now recommend to, and often force upon, the developing countries. Unfortunately, this fact is little known these days because the “official historians” of capitalism have been very successful in re-writing its history...
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What I don't understand is, assuming what stated below is true, why is free trade being promoted?
If so, why promote free trade?
So that the corporate giants of this world can corner the gobal market?
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why is free trade being promoted?
Which country has most powerful corporations in the world?