Our government marches to the tune set by corporate desire via lobbyists & campaign contributions. NAFTA in the 1990’s opened the floodgates to offshoring manufacturing jobs through Jack Welch started it in the 1980’s by shipping GE appliance jobs to Mexico to bring more profit to the bottom.
Then there is internal corporate sabotage within the government. Remember Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin(former co-chairman Goldman Sachs)? He in conjunction with Allen Greenspan & Larry Summer shut down Brooksey Born derivitives warning. Born actually wanted to create regulations over derivatives! That had to be stopped.
Rubin also facilitated the repeal of the Glass-Seagal Act which allowed commercial banks to get into stock & bond issuance. Once the prospect of the removal of the Glass-Seagal appear boy did the campaign contributions flowed to congressional reps & senator.
Reuban’s reward for his part in pushing the repeal through? Top job at Citicorp. One of the largest if not the largest commercial banks in the USA.
The above shenanigans has been written about. I use Nomi Prins’s “Other People’s Money:the corporate mugging of America ” as a source.
She left the investment bank world in 2001-02 after attaining a managing directors job at Goldman Sachs leaving much invested stock options on the table. She told her boss when resigning:”I know actually what to do to be successful here—and I have no desire to do it.”
She attained the upper level of the ziggurat she really saw the corruption & egarious pay and saw through “the Goldman rhetoric about how globalization was good for its bottom line and the general future of the universe.”
She became a journalist & book author writing about the US financial world & its impact on our economic world.
Her latest book “Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever”
A riveting exposé of a permanent financial dystopia, its causes, and real-world consequences It is abundantly clear that our world is divided into two very different economies. The real one, for the average worker, is based on productivity and results. It behaves according to traditional rules of money and economics. The other doesn’t. It is the product of years of loose money, poured by central banks into a system dominated by financial titans. It is powerful enough to send stock markets higher even in the face of a global pandemic and threats of nuclear war.
The above description of the book is taken from the Amazon website.
I would say you are casting blame on the wrong party. But that is just my opinion.
Back in the day of the East India Companies the “Police Force” was privatized to the East India Companies. One way or the other the consumer always pays the full price. No free lunch.
Goldman Sachs does a lot of crappy stuff for which they should be blamed, but I don’t think they and their ilk are responsible for American obesity, drug use, the widespread hiring of undocumented workers, or ( to get back on topic) the desire to buy lower priced foreign merchandise even if made in sweat shops at the cost of American jobs. Those behaviors are based on choices individual Americans make.
That and how problems are handled are generational in the US. The boomers “en mas” have been messing up for decades. If we had more Millennials in this forum we’d hear a different story.
You’ll have to explain this to me. The US military will certainly act in the US interests, including protecting trade routes important to America. But it is rare that the US military is deployed in areas where the US has no interests. That’s not really being a police force.
It also doesn’t appear that the US navy spends a lot of time protecting trade routes, it’s not like they are constantly deploying convoys as in WWII. So I suspect what the US populace may be actually growing tired of are attempts to impose regime change in cultures that aren’t amenable to democracy.
In any case, I think the real guarantor of maritime trade is the economic importance of the trade to most countries. This means that parties that threaten that trade are likely to face global economic sanctions. What would be the point?
There is always a need for a check on our spending patterns. But the American public understands the role we play in the world. There are fringe voices claiming massive clout on both sides. There are times where our foreign policy is very unpopular. But over all the American public is resourceful and dutiful to taking care of the world. We also get our military is a hammer that comes down.
btresist certainly corporate are not responsible for obesity or drug use. However corporations are full support, along with the Democratic Party for different reasons, of employing undocumented workers. So beneficial for the bottom line. Which why corporations also supported globalization as stuff got made with cheap labor & products in some cases remained high to benefit the bottom line. Apple is a prime example. Or in some cases like laptop went down somewhat but nowhere near what the corporations were raking in on profits from cheap labor.
And those extra profits from cheap labor along with financial data distortion largely goes to CEOs & the top 10% who own the majority of share in the stock market (80-90%).
In Welch speak:”Increased Shareholder Value” justified ever increasing CEO compensation.
I will defer trying to defend Zeihan’s claim about the importance of our Navy to globalization to his book, which does a great job making his claim. But just as a quick note, why was there not a “real guarantor of maritime trade” w/o the US Navy before Bretton Woods? Because before this happened, global maritime trade was a risky business.
This is why I laugh at people who complain about “subsidies” to renewable energy projects. They fail to realize how important our military spending is to keeping oil prices low and stable. And its never priced into the cost of oil, or an expense to petroleum companies.
Sure, but that’s because that area is deemed to be in America’s interest. In contrast, we don’t seem to care all that much about most of Africa, at least from a military perspective. America doesn’t spend a lot of resources keeping all trade routes safe, just the ones that matter to America. That’s not the definition of a global policeman.
The main reason why corporations support globalization is because American consumers want the benefits of globalization. Americans benefited from globalization with higher quality cars, cheaper electronics, and less expensive clothes. Ask your buddies if they would be willing to pay an extra $149.99 for an American-built iphone. What do you think they would say?
There is such a fuss being made about the rising prices caused by inflation. That would pale in comparison to the price increases resulting from protectionism that eliminates competition from foreign brands.
Global trade was increasing rapidly since the first industrial revolution in the 19th century. It decline for obvious reasons after the two world wars and it took until the 1980s to regain the levels seen in 1900. In other words, international trade was increasing at a pretty rapid pace when America was only a regional power with a relatively modest navy. What does Zeihan say about the pace of globalization from 1850 to WWI?
Globalization appears to be an inevitable consequence of industrialization that is only disrupted by wars. America’s military dominance indirectly helped global trade by reducing the likelihood of global conflicts, but that’s about it.
There is an interesting uTube video about the end (collapse) of the bronze age. It talks about trade not just in the Mediterranean but from Afghanistan to the British isles. Tin from Britain, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, olive oil from the Middle East and so on.
1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed | Eric Cline
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There was the ancient incense trade route route through Yemen in Biblical times.
The incense land trade from South Arabia to the Mediterranean flourished between roughly the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD
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Around the 15th century the Age of Discovery joined forces with limited liability joint stock corporations to start a new age of globalization dominated by the East India companies and other trading houses.
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Globalization is just trade writ large. We could be witnessing the collapse of the post WWII, Bretton Woods age of relative peace and abundant prosperity.
That industrialization helped accelerate it. For example, it allowed faster traversal of oceans, and going against river currents. But you still had piracy issues. However, as your graph shows, it really took off post Bretton Woods.
What the US Navy did was allow ANYONE (with or without a navy to protect their interests) to trade with anyone else. THAT NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.
If you really want to know more, and what Zeihan thinks, you need to read his book.
There is little evidence that globalization is in long-term decline.
Again, globalization was advancing at a very rapid pace well before Bretton Woods so there is no reason to believe that a Bretton Woods navy is necessary for globalization.
Any acceleration of globalization is (IMO) more likely due to advances in technology. Giant mostly automated container ships, GPS/satellite navigation, more accurate tracking of storm systems, more efficient methods of financial transactions with foreign currency, have probably had a greater impact on the pace of globalization and maritime trade than the US navy.
Globalization can collapse. It has before. Economists call the period from about 1870 to 1914 the First Globalization. WWI obviously blew a big hole in that. But globalization also caused a huge wealth disparity, and there was a backlash against immigrants and other nations, which in turn made trade tariffs popular in many nations, not just the US. Many countries went off the gold standard which made trade harder. Globalization was effectively ended until after the end of WWII when GATT was created and the dollar became the world’s reserve currency. From that time until now GATT and its successors have lowered tariffs and standardized trade.
Currently, we are experiencing a huge wealth disparity. There is a backlash against immigrants and other nations, and trade tariffs have become popular again. International trade agreements like the EU are straining at the seams and the TPP was DOA. There is also a hot war that hasn’t spread too far, but it isn’t helping. Many actors don’t want the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
So yeah, globalization can totally fail. The world is a lot different now than in 1914, but a lot of the same pieces are in place.
And if you read Peter’s book he would tell you yes, it was accelerating before. And continued more so. And that the Navy had a big impact on that for reasons I’m tired of discussing in a forum. If you don’t believe me, read the book. His reasoning is solid.
The only times globalization has failed since the first industrial revolution is during times of world war, major recessions, and global pandemics. Even those over the long-term have just been hiccups on what has otherwise been steady increases in international trade. Looks to me from the data that barring catastrophic events, globalization is an inherent tendency of human societies.
Just keep in mind that this isn’t physics, there is no experimental testing of Zeihan’s claims. Zeihan finds correlations and provides a rationale for why those correlations are causal. He spins a narrative that is essentially intelligent guessing. Much like Malthus prediction of global famine and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb.
Globalization is not in decline. In 2021, global trade hit an historic high, up 13% from 2019, the year before the pandemic. We only think globalization is in decline because we have a very American-centric POV. America no longer dominates international trade. We now have formidable competitors and because of that we have had some well publicized negative impacts (as well as positive one’s that we pay less attention to). But the reality is that globalization has greatly reduced global poverty, particularly in Asia with Africa likely being the next big benefactor. The world benefits from international trade and the only alternative is an economic depression, so globalization is here to stay. America just has to adjust to now being one of several economic equals rather than the elephant in the room.
Technological advances continue to make international trade easier to do, most notably improvements in transportation, communication, and information processing. Technology is making the world smaller and more interconnected. Reversing globalization means trying to swim against an increasingly powerful current. Ain’t gonna happen for any significant length of time.
