Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
George Bush has thrown down the gauntlet, issuing a public challenge to the
anti-corporate globalization movement. When hundreds of thousands last month
demonstrated against the G-8 meeting of rich country leaders in Genoa, Italy,
George Bush decried the activists, saying it was the advocates of corporate
globalization who genuinely are seeking to advance the interests of the world’s
poor.
It’s
not enough to mock Bush’s pretension of being a defender of the poor by pointing
out that, through his giant tax cut, the president has overseen one of the
history’s great transfers of wealth to the rich in U.S. history. Critics must
respond to his claims.
Unfortunately, that turns out to be a remarkably easy challenge to meet. The
last 20 years of corporate globalization, even measured by the preferred
indicators of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, have been a
disaster for the world’s poor.
Over
the last two decades, Latin America has experienced stagnant growth, and African
countries have seen incomes plummet. The only developing countries that have
done well in the last two decades are those Asian countries that ignored the
standard prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank.
The
Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has
published compelling data comparing growth rates from 1980 to 2000 (during the
period of ascending IMF/World Bank power, when countries throughout the
developing world adhered to the IMF/Bank structural adjustment policy package of
slashing government spending, privatizating government-owned enterprises,
liberalizing trade, orienting economies to exports and opening up countries to
exploitative foreign investment) with the previous 20 year period (when many
poor countries focused more on developing their own productive capacity and
meeting local needs).
The
results: "89 countries — 77 percent, or more than three-fourths — saw their
per capita rate of growth fall by at least five percentage points from the
period (1960-1980) to the period (1980-2000). Only 14 countries — 13 percent —
saw their per capita rate of growth rise by that much from (1960-1980) to
(1980-2000)."
CEPR
found that the growth slowdown has been so severe that "18 countries —
including several in Africa — would have more than twice as much income per
person as they have today, if they had maintained the rate of growth in the last
two decades that they had in the previous two decades. The average Mexican would
have nearly twice as much income today, and the average Brazilian much more than
twice as much, if not for the slowdown of economic growth over the last two
decades."
A
follow-up CEPR study used a similar methodology to look at social indicators.
CEPR found that progress in reducing infant mortality, reducing child mortality,
increasing literacy and increasing access to education has all slowed during the
period of corporate globalization, especially in developing countries.
The
CEPR global comparisons across time show the bottomline, combined effect of the
specific policy components of corporate-friendly policies imposed by the IMF and
World Bank and enforced by free trade agreements. These include the following:
*
Trade Liberalization — The elimination of tariff protections for agriculture
and industries in developing countries often leads to mass layoffs and
displacement of the rural poor. In Mexico, for example, opening to U.S.
agriculture imports has forced millions of poor farmers, who find themselves
unable to compete with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, off the land.
*
Privatization — IMF and World Bank structural adjustment policies typically
call for the sell off of government-owned enterprises to private owners, often
foreign investors. Privatization is regularly associated with layoffs and pay
cuts for workers in the privatized enterprises.
*
Cuts in government spending — Reductions in government spending frequently
reduce the ability of the government to provide services to the poor,
exacerbating the social pain from rural displacement and industrial layoffs.
*
Imposition of user fees — Many IMF and World Bank loans and programs call for
the imposition of "user fees" — charges for the use of government-provided
services like schools, health clinics and clean drinking water. For very poor
people, even modest charges may result in the denial of access to services.
*
Export promotion — Under structural adjustment programs, countries undertake a
variety of measures to promote exports, at the expense of production for
domestic needs. In the rural sector, the export orientation is often associated
with the displacement of poor people who grow food for their own consumption, as
their land is taken over by large plantations growing crops for foreign markets.
*
Higher interest rates — Attractive to foreign investors, higher interest rates
exert a recessionary effect on national economies, leading to higher rates of
joblessness. Small businesses, often operated by women, find it more difficult
to gain access to affordable credit, and often are unable to survive.
Advancing the interests of the poor has nothing to do with the corporate
globalization agenda. This agenda is driven first by profit-seeking, and second
by ideology.
But
the corporate globalizers are nothing if not ambitious. They are seeking now to
push fast-track negotiating authority through the U.S. Congress, to force all of
Latin America into a NAFTA-style trade and investment agreement, launch a new
World Trade Organization negotiating round, and intensify the IMF and World
Bank’s ability to impose structural adjustment through a sham debt relief
process.
To
lessen preventable human suffering, it is imperative that the protesters
continue to build the movement against corporate globalization, with everything
from street protests to citizen lobbying of Congress.
Another world is indeed possible, as the protesters are asserting. But for now
the immediate challenge is to stop the corporate globalizers from making the
existing one worse.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits
and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999).