By: Maurizio Del Conte In recent years, a new term has spread like wildfire to become a catch-all word in a regions of the world-globalization. The word i ubiquitous, splashed in newspapers, dissected in essays and academic journals, bandied at symposiums, quizzed by the man in the street and shouted against by parching protesters. … [Read more…]
An Essential Element of Fair Trade and Sustainable Development in the FTAA is an Enforceable Social Clause
By: Terry Collingsworth Multinational companies (“MNCs”) and governments that are fantasizing about a Free Trade Area of the Americas (“FTAA”) should accept the reality that the FTAA is not politically viable for the time being unless the issues of labor rights and other social conditions are addressed in a manner demonstrating that these rights … [Read more…]
The Economic Case for Labor Standards: A Layman’s Guide
By: Thomas I. Palley The place of labor standards in the global economy has figured prominently in recent discussions of trade and globalization. Labor standards figured prominently in the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, and they promise to figure prominently in discussions about a proposed Free Trade Area of … [Read more…]
Does Free Trade Cause Hunger? Hidden Implications of the FTAA
By: Jonathan B. Wight This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effects of any human wisdom, which forsees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which … [Read more…]
The Geography of Injustice: Borders and the Continuing Immiseration of California Agricultural Labor in Era of “Free Trade”
By: Don M. Mitchell Why is it that when the reigning ideology governing the expansion of “free trade” is anti-regulatory”, all agree that the movement of people, or rather laborers, must be carefully regulated? Indeed, why are borders strengthened for people just as states of the Western Hemisphere embark on a thorough reconfiguration, and … [Read more…]