INDEPTH: SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS
What is globalization?
CBC News Online | March 30, 2006
Ask someone who was sitting around any of the tables at any of the Summits of the Americas since 1994, what globalization is and you'd get a very different answer than from someone protesting on the outside of the ever-present security fences.
An anti-globalization march
|
A Canadian government website puts it succinctly enough: globalization, it says, "describes the increased mobility of goods, services, labour, technology and capital throughout the world." Sounds innocuous enough.
Canada, of course, was an early supporter of trade and investment liberalization and remains so today. More than 40 per cent of the country's economy depends directly on trade.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks make up the cornerstone of the Summit of the Americas process that began in late 1994. Its goal is to create the largest free trade area in the world – 34 countries in the Americas with 830 million people and a combined GDP of more than $20 trillion.
Richard Dwyer of Duncan, B.C. holds his sign out for passersby on the steps of B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver Monday Feb. 19, 2001 to protest against NAFTA. (CP PHOTO/Chuck Stoody)
|
So what's all the debate about? If the Canadian government thinks expanding trade and international investment is so vital to our economy (and it does think that), then why isn't everybody on board the globalization bandwagon?
Well, here's another definition of globalization – this one from an anti-globalization group known as Anti-Marketing. Globalization, it says, is "the process of exploiting economically weak countries by connecting the economies of the world, forcing dependence on (and ultimately subservience to) the western capitalist machine."
Colourful rhetoric aside, it is this latter definition that captures the essence of the considerable opposition to globalization – a conviction that unfettered, free markets inevitably benefit multinational corporations at the expense of smaller businesses, local culture and average workers.
Broadly speaking, those opposed to globalization say it leads to:
- Lower wages and fewer employee benefits.
- Higher unemployment.
- Lower health and safety standards.
- Lower environmental protection standards.
- Weaker, less effective government.
- Fewer social programs such as health care and education.
- Less protection for developing industries and countries.
Supporters of globalization say further economic integration has many benefits, among them:
- Better access to international markets.
- Increased competition.
- Cheaper goods and services.
- Better mobility for workers.
- More efficient markets.
- More competitive industries.
- Less government regulation.
- Smaller bureaucracies.
- Lower taxes.
Workers sort special grade cedar lumber at Interfor's Hammond Cedar Mill in Maple Ridge, B.C. (CP PHOTO/Chuck Stoody)
|
So who's right? The reality seems to be that globalization can often take both sides. Like technology, it's not a neutral force.
"Globalization is a phenomenon of paradoxes," says Maureen O'Neill, president of the federal government's International Development Research Centre. "It is a force of integration – whether in the WTO, or in the protocols of the internet, or in the worldwide audience for Hollywood movies.
"At the same time, it divides us: generation from generation, fundamentalists from modernists, secessionists from centralizers, rich from poor."
Is it possible to find a balance between globalization's benefits and costs? Supporters say we must try; opponents say the whole exercise is doomed to failure because those without the power aren't at the negotiating tables making the decisions.
Seamstresses work on their sewing machines at the Camen's Confections clothing factory Wednesday, in Guadalajara City, Mexico. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)
|
Globalization's long history
Globalization, if it's measured simply by the flow of money and goods across borders, is obviously not something new. In the Middle Ages, the Silk Road joined Europe to China in a thriving example of international commerce. Later, colonial empires were prime conduits of globalization. The Dutch East India Company carried its precious
cargoes of silk, spices and tea from all parts of the known world in the 17th and 18th centuries.
But beginning around 1950, and especially in the 1980s and 1990s, governments around the world brought in free-market economic policies that dramatically pushed the globalization agenda forward. The world's leaders declared themselves solidly behind a trade-liberalized planet. Tariffs and other barriers to trade began tumbling down as countries and regions negotiated free trade agreements.
A woman draws water from a well in a squatter community where she lives on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2003 in Tijuana, Mexico.(AP Photo/David Maung)
|
This pick-up in globalization was due in no small way to technological advances – everything from the passenger jet to the internet – that have made it easier for people to travel and do business beyond their own borders.
Writer Thomas Friedman differentiated this modern version of globalization from the earlier ones. "Farther, faster, cheaper and deeper," he said, and few would argue with that.
Canada and globalization
Canada is no novice in the globalization drive. Canada and the United States signed a Free Trade Agreement that took effect in 1989. The two countries later joined Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went into effect in 1994. Canada has also implemented free trade agreements with Israel and Chile in 1997, and with Costa Rica in 2002. And we're talking to many more countries.
But it's the effort to expand the globalization effort from bilateral agreements to
multi-lateral behemoths that has attracted the most attention (and the most criticism). And it is these mega-deals that are proving especially hard to reach.
Global trade activists want an expanded WTO deal that would lower many of the barriers that discourage international trade and commerce, saying that would make all of its 146 member nations richer. At least that's the idea.
But at the round of WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003, the U.S. and the European Union wouldn't budge on lowering their own huge agricultural subsidies.
Similarly, opposition from Brazil at the FTAA ministerial talks in November 2003 in Miami led to what some critics call "FTAA Lite" - a decision to allow signatories to opt out of some elements of the proposed 34-nation agreement.
Many observers say Miami – and especially Cancun – were major setbacks in the goal of a global trade agreement. In the meantime, more and more countries (Canada included) are pinning their trade liberalization hopes on smaller, bilateral treaties.
The debate over how best to manage the international flow of labour, capital, ideas, goods and services will no doubt continue for years. The decision to trade is easy; trying to write the rule book is something else again.
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| QUICK FACTS: |
Summit dates:
2005: Fourth Summit of the Americas; Argentina
2004: Special Summit of the Americas; Monterrey, Mexico
2001: Third Summit of the Americas; Quebec City
1998: Second Summit of the Americas; Santiago, Chile
1996: Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development; Santa
Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia
1994: Summit of the Americas; Miami, Florida
|
|
| EXTERNAL LINKS: |
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in new window.
