Part Two. The Wisdom Of Protectionism. The Madness Of Free Trade

 Part Two.  The Wisdom of Protectionism.  The Madness of Free Trade.

The most massive and most dangerous lie, incessantly perpetrated,  is the lie about Free Trade: ‘Free Trade benefits all’. The lie is built upon people’s sense that trade has obvious benefits, and upon the “natural” tendency people have to engage in trade.  From there, a huge and monstrous delusion is created, which insists foreign trade must be engaged in as fully as possible and those who do not engage massively are doomed to primitive life and “backward” society.

Trade IS “natural”.  From earliest recorded time communities traded their excess goods of one kind for the scarce goods they needed or wanted that (to begin) neighbouring people possessed.  The naturalness of trade has nothing to do with Free Trade.  Agreeing on trade prices and terms between equal bargainers is as far from what happens in Free Trade as can be imagined.

Often early trade was built upon “luxuries” desired – spices for preserving and enhancing foods or fine raiment for comfort and display. And it has grown very much in that way, so that the “First World” (the rich and powerful nations which can dictate trade patterns) shop in their local stores through the whole year for the finest foodstuffs that are never “out of season” because they are hauled in, “fresh” from, literally, all over the world.

And, of course, what goes for foodstuffs goes, also, for all other imaginable commodities.

That worldly Nirvana happens, of course, only as long as the Second and Third and Fourth Worlds exist in states of increasingly exploited, oppressed, and dominated conditions, the people of those countries living, in fact, in states of subjection so that the First World may enjoy the benefits of “Free Trade”.

“Free Trade”, in fact, is a system in which countries “open their borders” to trade without restriction.  That “opening” involves opening to “trade” in their financial and property systems. The wealthy, dominant country can buy up all the assets it wants in the weak, poor country.  It can transform the economy of the poor country to make it serve the dominant country. And it (almost always) can create an export economy in the poor country that is totally dependent upon the market of the wealthy country for survival.  Almost always, the wealthy country manipulates the market to force the poor country into bankruptcy – and then dictates every aspect of its life. 

Nonetheless, the Free Trade agreement is completely equal and fair. For the weak, poor country could do exactly the same to the wealthy, dominant country (in theory) – except it never has the wealth or power to do so.  Free Trade.

Seen from that perspective, the reality of “Free Trade” is not very pleasant. The expression: “there is no Free Lunch” arises out of the long-learned truth that anyone who offers a free lunch usually makes the diners pay in ways they haven’t expected.  By the same token, “There is no Free Trade”, for the beneficiaries of such a system turn the other trading population into “colonials”, “wogs”, slaves in “slave economies”, people of “developing” (but never “developed”) nations.  The idea that “developing nations” in Free Trade arrangements will become “developed” is a myth tirelessly perpetrated.

Rather, the weaker trading nation is turned into a Banana Republic. The “Banana Republic” is a type of nation in which all normal balances of food (and other) production are destroyed in order to turn the nation into a single export producer of goods “needed” by the First World. The people of the country - “developing”- lose all self=sufficiency, depending - for survival - on the money gained by foreign trade. Placed in purposefully perilous economic condition, the country is soon manipulated into debt-laden life, perilous existence, and colonial status without end. Land is exhausted by exploitation and the people are impoverished by First World manipulation.  Free Trade.

Some earliest trade was connected to the desire for exotic products, engaging the wealthy in risky and adventurous investment – usually in pursuit of greater wealth and luxury. The development of Free Trade, from the beginning, has almost always been connected to that fact – stated however one wants to state it.  The traders in powerful nations, influencing governments in power, have designed policies of trade expansion that assure wealth and luxury to the few. 

It need only be said that the First Queen Elizabeth of England donated a ship to the first English Slave Trader so that she could share in the profits of the new adventure into “World Trade”.

That kind of trade arrangement between rich corporations and friends in government is as old as trade expansion. And the bribed government officials in the Banana Republic are also as old.  The roi negre or Nigger King (usually set up in power by gunboat diplomacy) who sold his own people to the Slave Traders has been repeated forever in African, Central and South American states, especially. When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund began colonizing the South American nations from (fittingly) offices in New York, almost all the nations involved had dictators who were happy to become personally wealthy as part of helping to impoverish their own people.

With a tiny land mass, England built an empire on trade, manufacture, gun=boat diplomacy, and the acquisition of foreign territory – until the peoples of the Empire marvelled at the world map, covered in the pink that indicated British “possessions”.

The USA, rich in territory, raw materials, and arable land scorned the taking of foreign possessions, and bragged (and still brags) that it has no (territorial) Empire, and so is not an imperial power.  The basis of U.S. imperial wealth and power was built at home by the creation of a black slave economy that lasted for two hundred years, and by the extermination of the resident peoples – the Indians – in order to seize their lands and develop a world empire built on trade, manufacture, and gun-boat diplomacy.

Imperial powers and other powers able to share in the looting of weaker countries are always the advocates, initiators, and supporters of a world devoted to Free Trade.

Canada is a mixed case.  It is called a First World country but really belongs to the Second World.  It shares in the imperial looting of the world without being, itself, an imperial power. (It has very few gun-boats to operate gun-boat diplomacy.)  But it pays the price by being – as part of its existence – a colonial country that is looted to increase imperial wealth.  In fact, Canada is an excellent example of such a “middle power”. 

Canada’s much propagandized “Free Trade Agreements” are, in fact, agreements in which Canadian government and wealthy Canadians agree to colonial status within the U.S. imperial system.

They agree, for instance, that the U.S. has unbroken right to Canadian energy resources regardless of world price and Canadian needs.  They agree that Canada cannot interfere in any way with U.S. profit-making in Canada or assist Canadian interests to become seriously competitive with the U.S. profit-makers. They agree in a number of ways, in fact, that U.S. economic dominance in Canada will be guaranteed and the U.S. will have the right to “share” (that is to take possession of) major Canadian raw resources as the U.S. sees fit.

That is what the wealthy and sold-out rulers do more brazenly in the naked Banana Republics.

Interestingly, wherever U.S. interests are obstructed, the USA ignores and repudiates its Free Trade Agreements with Canada – another sign of Canada’s willing colonial status. On softwood lumber, just for instance, the U.S. repeatedly breaks the Free Trade Agreements with no penalties.

And now President Obama declares (in its new reconstruction policies) the U.S. will observe all trade agreements, except that State and Municipal governments will be permitted to violate such agreements at will. He is saying that in a time of US need, treaties are for idiots.  But that is always and everywhere what imperial powers have said, Free Trade being a convenience for them to get access to global wealth and take it home.  When they need other policies to guarantee home wealth, they throw out Free Trade.

“There is no Free Trade”.  There is only the exploitation that dominant countries enter into after buying governments and signing fake “national” treaties. (In Canada’s major “Free Trade Election” a majority of Canadians rejected Free Trade. Their government signed the Free Trade treaty.)

Before turning to so-called Protectionism, some more needs to be said about post-Second World War U.S. imperial makeover of the world through “Free Trade” and the machineries it has used, called the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, The World Trade Organization and other related “global” organizations.  That will happen in Part Three.