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Abstract
The 1990s debate about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became polarized between neoliberal globalizers and an impressive, progressive, antineoliberal coalition of trade unions and social movements. By contrast, in the 2018 NAFTA renegotiation debate, while the neoliberal globalizers were still on the stage, this time their opponents were Trump and his team of white-nationalist, Right-wing populist protectionists. For progressive voices to engage with this debate, we need to examine and transcend habits formed in the earlier era, and seriously address the debilitating nonequivalent exchange that structures trade and investment in contemporary capitalism.
Notes
Acknowledgements
The ideas for this article were first outlined in “Trade Policy in a World of Protectionism and Non-equivalent Exchange,” a paper presented at a workshop called “Towards a Socially Responsible Trade Policy,” organized by Centre d’études sur l’intégration et la mondialisation (CEIM) Montréal, February 9, 2018. Papers based on this research were prepared for the 2019 conference of the International Studies Association and the Canadian Political Science Association (Kellogg, “Trade Policy in a World of Protectionism and Non-Equivalent Exchange”; Kellogg, “Protectionism vs. Globalization: The False Choices of Contemporary Political Economy”).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
About the author
Paul Kellogg teaches at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at Athabasca University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Notes
1 The Hamilton Spectator, “Bombardier CSeries Faces 300% in Export Duties to the United States.”
2 Rinaldo, “Bombardier Wins Case with Boeing [Transcript].”
3 Blanchfield, “Trump Makes Good on Promise to Pull U.S. out of Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
4 Olive, “Battered America Rises Again.”
5 Haigh and Karunungan, “Here’s What Trump’s Tariffs on U.S. Imports Are Doing to Markets.”
6 Borak, “Trump Warns of Tariffs on Another $267 Billion of Chinese Imports.”
7 Trump, “…China Has Been Taking Advantage.”
8 Johnson and Allen-Ebrahimian, “Canada and Mexico Prepare for Life After NAFTA.”
9 Hébert, “The Web of Politics Is a Tangled One.”
10 Trump, “Donald Trump, CEO, Trump Organization, Delivers a Presidential Campaign Announcement.”
11 United States, “Buy American”; Canada, “The Buy American Act and Buy America Provisions.”
12 Hearst was to be immortalized as the probable inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, protagonist of Orson Welles’ 1941 movie, Citizen Kane—a classic exposé of the inhumanity resulting from the single-minded pursuit of power and profit.
13 Frank, Buy American, 57.
14 Frank, Buy American, 57.
15 United States, Tariff Act of 1930.
16 CNW, “Unifor Welcomes Start of NAFTA Renegotiation.”
17 Bomey, “UAW Wants to Join Trump in Effort to Crush NAFTA.”
18 Walkom, “If Trump Kills NAFTA, Canada Could Benefit.”
19 Walkom, “Donald Trump Shows Globalization Can Be Challenged.”
20 McLaughlin, “Free Trade Failed Canada. We Don’t Need to Expand It.”
21 Knight, “‘Seattle Tea Party’ to Protest against WTO.”
22 Kellogg, “Prairie Capitalism Revisited: Canada, Bitumen and the Resource Colony Question.” For an analysis that provides parallel and compatible research, see Carroll and Huijzer, “Who Owns Canada’s Fossil-Fuel Sector?”
23 OPSEU, “OPSEU Joins Unifor in Boycott of Mexican-Made GM Products.”
24 Hargrove, “CAW Election Issue Fact Sheet—Message from Buzz Hargrove.”
25 This should not be confused with understandable calls to “source locally.” The impetus for these kinds of calls are often environmental and completely defensible. But when a Global North country explicitly privileges products made within its borders, it is implicitly targetting others outside those borders as the source of its economic problems. When the United States is the “other” targetted, that is one thing. But when there is a long habit of singling out Mexico and China as the “others,” that is something else altogether.
26 Preobrazhensky, The New Economics.
27 For an early attempt using Gross National Income per capita at market-exchange rates as the metric, see Kellogg, “Prairie Capitalism Revisited: Canada, Bitumen and the Resource Colony Question.” The figures here are based on a revised version, using Gross Domestic Product per capita (PPP-adjusted) as the metric (Kellogg, “Trade Policy in a World of Protectionism and Non-Equivalent Exchange.”)
28 There are, in fact, 53 such countries, but several had to be excluded, as information for one or more of the categories being evaluated was not available. The excluded countries are Morocco (population 36 million); Venezuela (population 32 million); Saudi Arabia (population 33 million); Uzbekistan (population 32 million); Malaysia (population 32 million); and North Korea (population 25 million).
29 The World Bank, “GDP (Current US$).”
30 The tables in this article do not attempt to replicate for their calculations the disaggregation of China and India into urban and rural economies. China (urban and rural together) moves to Tier 2b, and India (urban and rural together) to Tier 3a.
31 Author’s calculations based on data in Pele, “Historical Exchange Rates from 1953 with Graph and Charts.”
32 Marx, Capital. Volume III—A Critique of Political Economy, 45–52.
33 Sau, “Purchasing Power Parity, Unequal Exchange and Foreign Direct Investment.”
34 Sau, “Purchasing Power Parity, Unequal Exchange and Foreign Direct Investment,” 1927.
35 Swianiewicz, Forced Labour and Economic Development, 87.
36 Marx, Capital. Volume I—A Critique of Political Economy, 157–66. This article has on occasion used references from Karl Marx. His insights into exploitation and the dynamics of capitalism are important. But his writings are not always a model. In the very section being quoted here he writes: “The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews” (Marx, 165). From any standpoint, this kind of imagery is offensive and unacceptable.
37 In fact, Marx used the symbol M´ (“M prime”). The mathematical prefix “>” which indicates “greater than” is exact, and easier to represent typographically.
38 Frank, Buy American, 78–79.
39 Frank, Buy American, 80.
40 Frank, Buy American, 83.
41 Frank, Buy American, 84.
42 Frank, Buy American, 87.
43 Created by the author based on data in The World Bank, “GDP per Capita, PPP (Current International $)”; The World Bank, “GDP per Capita (Current US$)”; ILC, “International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs in Manufacturing, 2016.” Figures for all countries are from 2015 except for India (2014) and China (2013).
44 Created by the author based on data in The World Bank, “GDP per Capita, PPP (Current International $)”; The World Bank, “GDP per Capita (Current US$).”