Free Trade
The popular capitalist notion of free trade has preached that eliminating trade barriers like import duties would mean that everyone profits. Just like with the free market. Very much a win-win proposition.
A joint report just issued by the World Trade Organization and the International Labor Organization concludes that freer trade has not led to better work conditions in the developing world. This report has found that although free trade has resulted in an increase in employment in the poorer countries, most of the jobs created are at extremely low wages, with no social security, little job security, and with minimal workplace health and safety protections in place.
Pascal Lamy, the head of the WTO, said free trade requires proper domestic policies in these developing countries if good jobs are to be created.
By shifting all these millions of good manufacturing jobs away from America we have done several things. We have insured that the super-wealthy in the USA and China get even richer. This outsourcing and these layoffs have caused the middle and working classes in America to suffer and decline noticeably. America is now less the land of opportunity than it was 40 years ago.
The best solution to this appalling situation is for America to institute import duties insuring a level playing field. The price of goods imported from abroad would be brought up by the same amount as if the producing companies had obeyed reasonable child labor laws, minimum wage laws, paid social security, worked under sensible workplace health and safety regulations, and had to obey the same environmental pollution regulations as American and European companies. If the foreign companies could prove that they do all of the above, then the import duties would be eliminated.
The revenue generated by these “level playing field” import duties can be used to pay for socially worthwhile projects like raising old age pensions paid out by social security, implementing 100% Universal Health Care in America, and encouraging energy conservation.
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