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American Workers Lose Jobs to Foreign Competition

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American Workers Lose Jobs to Foreign Competition

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One downside of globalization is that penalizes first world countries. Because companies can spread throughout the world, many first world nations lose manufacturing jobs to developing countries. For example, from 2000 to 2001, 55,000 in the United States have closed and 6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. The workers in developing nations are much cheaper than in countries like the U.S. Outsourcing, a result of globalization, is the cause for this because if nations were not so deeply interdependent, it would be very difficult to use other countries’ labor for American companies. This is also the reason a certain dark horse candidate who opposes globalization, Donald Trump, has risen in polls.

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Economic globalization and the decline of U.S. manufacturing that began in the 1990s represents "the sellout of the American worker" - and is fueling Donald Trump's popularity, veteran political commentator Patrick Buchanan tells Newsmax TV.

In an interview Friday with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth, the former adviser to three presidents, author of "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority,"and member of "The McLaughlin Group" says the impact of jobs moving out of the United States first hit him in a 1992 visit to a shoe factory in New Hampshire.

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"They were handing out Christmas turkeys to the employees and I went up to shake hands with them and I found out they had all been laid off that day," he recalled. "One guy about my age looked in my eyes and just said 'Save our jobs.' It went right through me.

"And then you look at what happened in the first decade of this century - 55,000 American factories disappeared and 6 million manufacturing jobs. What had begun seriously back in the '90s had reached the dimensions today that Donald Trump's campaign is riding on."

Buchanan argues globalization "puts the transnational corporations, many of them American... at war with their workers in first world countries, especially the United States.

"The interests of a big transnational company ... is to produce where it can do it cheapest - in China, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, wherever - bring these products back in the United States, free of charge, if it gets that kind of trade deal, put in Walmart and increase profits," he added. "That is the sellout of the American worker.

"Economic patriotism dies in this new globalist world," he added.

But the impact reaches into society itself, he asserts.

"I think you're seeing the decline and fall of Western civilization before our eyes," he said. "You take a look at all the Western empires are gone and now these subject peoples or their descendants are now crossing the Mediterranean to invade and repopulate other countries. I think that's history unfolding."

© 2018 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Pat Buchanan: Economic Globalization Is the 'Sellout of the American Worker'

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Economic globalization and the decline of U.S. manufacturing that began in the 1990s represents "the sellout of the American worker" - and is fueling Donald Trump's popularity, veteran political commentator Patrick Buchanan tells Newsmax TV. In an interview Friday with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D.

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One issue faced by countries that participate in globalization, including Canada, is that some of their students cannot compete with other foreign students. One reason is because they do not travel abroad as much as other students, only 2% of Canadian students study abroad for college. Despite that, a large majority of 18 to 25 year old Canadians stated in a poll that it is important to learn from international people. In another poll, over 66% of Canadian employers agreed that Canada is at a risk of being left behind if they do not learn to think more globally. The reason students have to compete against many advanced foreign workers is because of globalization, and this will hurt Canada and similar nations in the near future.

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Today, our graduates are competing with their peers all over the world for the jobs of tomorrow. At the current rate of growth, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that there will 200 million 25- to 34-year-olds with a higher education degree by 2020. Canadians will only account for two per cent of that population. For our students, global peers will soon become both competitors and colleagues. To be relevant 21st century educators, we must equip students with the skills they need to be able to collaborate and compete in a global workforce.

Introducing students to global perspectives by opening campus doors to international students is a critical step toward that end. And while greater study abroad opportunities are another mechanism to ensure international experience, that can be cost-prohibitive for many students, especially those who are economically disadvantaged. Just two per cent of Canadian students studied abroad last year, a number that has remained constant for decades despite student-mobility initiatives being promoted at every university in Canada.

Universities are driven by the mission to educate and prepare students for the future, so it is therefore imperative that we create classrooms that are more reflective of today's competitive and globalized work environment. The millennial generation has grown up in a time like no other - where technology is opening our borders at an ever-quickening pace. These students are beginning to demand and deserve a more diverse university experience. Realizing that students stay the same age while we administrators only grow older, Navitas recently conducted a poll of 18- to 25-year-olds to better understand perceptions and expectations of internationalization, and over 90 per cent of those surveyed felt it was important to be exposed to world views that are different than theirs.

Even more important, two out of three hiring managers say Canada is at risk of being left behind dynamic global economies like China, India and Brazil unless young Canadians learn to think more globally. This is driving student demand - the overwhelming majority of 18- to 25-year-olds polled believed that employers' interest in international experience made exposure to other cultures more appealing and urgent.

The good news is that there is already high demand among international students to study outside of their home countries. According to the latest data from the Canadian Bureau for International Education, there were 336,000 international students studying in Canada in the 2014-15 school year, and that number has been growing year-over-year. Yet, those international students are densely concentrated at only a handful of institutions, resulting in a deficit of experience for the vast majority of our domestic students. After 10 years of partnership, former Fraser International College students now account for over 3,500 of the total international enrollments at Simon Fraser University, which is roughly one per cent of the total number of international students in the country. There are well over 200 colleges and universities across the country, so the fact that one program at one school should represent even one per cent means that our higher education systems are not doing enough to make this a priority.

Universities cannot know what jobs may be available, or what skills students may need ten, or even five, years down the road, but certainly we can predict that the trend of borderless economies will continue. If higher education in our country is going to keep pace and stay relevant, every classroom needs to reflect this new global reality.
Christa Ovenell serves as college director and principal of Fraser International College, a partnership between pathway provider Navitas and Simon Fraser University, marking its 10-year anniversary in 2016.

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Opinion: Our students aren't equipped to deal with globalization

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Today, our graduates are competing with their peers all over the world for the jobs of tomorrow. At the current rate of growth, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that there will 200 million 25- to 34-year-olds with a higher education degree by 2020.

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 Globalization Helps Developing Countries Get Goods and Growth

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 Globalization Helps Developing Countries Get Goods and Growth

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Globalization helps nations with many things. Globalization creates open markets throughout the world, it increases communication with consumers, partners, and suppliers.  This in turn helps them manage resources, stock of items, and their network of distribution better. This is underlined by how companies can easily and effectively sell their items in foreign markets because they have stores there. Also, globalization creates lots of money flow between developed and developing nations. Due to the fact that foreign investor cannot separate good investments from bad investments, there is all-around economic development in the countries through an increase in wages and a decrease in unemployment.

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Globalization, the increasing integration and interdependence of domestic and overseas markets, has three sides: the good side, the bad side, and the ugly side.

The good side of globalization is all about the efficiencies and opportunities open markets create. Business can communicate efficiently and effectively with their partners, suppliers, and customers and manage better their supplies, inventories, and distribution network. Local producers can sell their products in distant markets with the same ease and speed as in their home country. Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), for instance, can sell its TV and game consoles with the same ease in New York as in Tokyo. Likewise, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) can sell their high tech gear with the same ease in Tokyo as in New York.

The good side of globalization is also about easy credit and rising leverage, as money flows easily across local and national boundaries, and creditors fail to distinguish between good and bad borrowers, boosting aggregate demand; setting the world economy into a virtuous cycle of income and employment growth; and easy credit and leverage fuel financial bubbles that feed into a euphoria that perpetuates the virtuous cycle.

The bad side of globalization is all about the new risks and uncertainties brought about by the high degree of integration of domestic and local markets, intensification of competition, high degree of imitation, price and profit swings, and business and product destruction. Corporations that previously have been enjoying the benefits of globalization, now face unstable and unpredictable demand and business opportunities and their products quickly become commodities, leaving them little or no pricing power and under constant pressure by new competitors that undermine profitability.

The bad side of globalization is also about tight credit, deleverage, and declining money flows across local and national boundaries, as creditors tighten credit to both good and bad borrowers, depressing aggregate demand; setting the world economy into a vicious cycle of income and employment declines; and euphoria is succeeded by pessimism and a burst of asset bubbles, perpetuating the downward spiral of the world economy.

The ugly side of globalization is when nations and local communities try to escape the vicious cycle of income and employment declines through simultaneous currency devaluations; and by raising trade barriers that in essence put an end to globalization and a beginning to trade wars, as was the case in the 1930s.

In the last quarter of the century and for the most part of the first decade of this century, the world has seen the good side of globalization. In the last four years, the world has seen the bad side of globalization. We do hope and pray that the world won't see the ugly side of it.

Also read:
Why A Labor Shortage Is Good News For The Chinese Economy An Open Letter To The Capitalist Enterprise Why the Next Financial Crisis Will Be Nastier

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The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Side Of Globalization

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Image via Wikipedia Globalization, the increasing integration and interdependence of domestic and overseas markets, has three sides: the good side, the bad side, and the ugly side. The good side of globalization is all about the efficiencies and opportunities open markets create. Business can communicate efficiently and effectively with their partners, suppliers, [...]

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Many people combat the notion that globalization is bad with the idea that it can make places across the globe better places through solving poverty. Due to globalization making companies have to compete with companies from all over the globe, prices are lowered by a lot. This can combat poverty because it will globally raise the standard of living. It also helps eradicate poverty by providing poor countries jobs. Also, when trading with developing countries, globalization also presses democracy and social acceptance on them, which increases human rights in that country. Finally, by establishing bases of operations in foreign developing countries, this helps share technology which all around helps the new countries.

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A story in the Washington Post said "20 years ago globalization was pitched as a strategy that would raise all boats in poor and rich countries alike. In the U.S. and Europe consumers would have their pick of inexpensive items made by people thousands of miles away whose pay was much lower than theirs. And in time trade barriers would drop to support even more multinationals expansion and economic gains while geo political cooperation would flourish."

There is no question that globalization has been a good thing for many developing countries who now have access to our markets and can export cheap goods. Globalization has also been good for Multi-national corporations and Wall Street. But globalization has not been good for working people (blue or white collar) and has led to the continuing deindustrialization of America.

Globalization is a complicated issue. It is necessary to evaluate the pros and cons before drawing any conclusions.

Pros

Supporters of globalization argue that it has the potential to make this world a better place to live in and solve some of the deep-seated problems like unemployment and poverty.

1. Free trade is supposed to reduce barriers such as tariffs, value added taxes, subsidies, and other barriers between nations. This is not true. There are still many barriers to free trade. The Washington Post story says "the problem is that the big G20 countries added more than 1,200 restrictive export and import measures since 2008

2. The proponents say globalization represents free trade which promotes global economic growth; creates jobs, makes companies more competitive, and lowers prices for consumers.

3. Competition between countries is supposed to drive prices down. In many cases this is not working because countries manipulate their currency to get a price advantage.

4. It also provides poor countries, through infusions of foreign capital and technology, with the chance to develop economically and by spreading prosperity, creates the conditions in which democracy and respect for human rights may flourish. This is an ethereal goal which hasn't been achieved in most countries

5. According to supporters globalization and democracy should go hand in hand. It should be pure business with no colonialist designs.

6. There is now a worldwide market for companies and consumers who have access to products of different countries. True

7. Gradually there is a world power that is being created instead of compartmentalized power sectors. Politics is merging and decisions that are being taken are actually beneficial for people all over the world. This is simply a romanticized view of what is actually happening. True

8. There is more influx of information between two countries, which do not have anything in common between them. True

9. There is cultural intermingling and each country is learning more about other cultures. True

10. Since we share financial interests, corporations and governments are trying to sort out ecological problems for each other. - True, they are talking more than trying.

11. Socially we have become more open and tolerant towards each other and people who live in the other part of the world are not considered aliens. True in many cases.

12. Most people see speedy travel, mass communications and quick dissemination of information through the Internet as benefits of globalization. True

13. Labor can move from country to country to market their skills. True, but this can cause problems with the existing labor and downward pressure on wages.

14. Sharing technology with developing nations will help them progress. True for small countries but stealing our technologies and IP have become a big problem with our larger competitors like China.

15. Transnational companies investing in installing plants in other countries provide employment for the people in those countries often getting them out of poverty. True

16. Globalization has given countries the ability to agree to free trade agreements like NAFTA, South Korea Korus, and The TPP. True but these agreements have cost the U.S. many jobs and always increase our trade deficit

Cons

* The general complaint about globalization is that it has made the rich richer while making the non-rich poorer. "It is wonderful for managers, owners and investors, but hell on workers and nature."

* Globalization is supposed to be about free trade where all barriers are eliminated but there are still many barriers. For instance161 countries have value added taxes (VATs) on imports which are as high as 21.6% in Europe. The U.S. does not have VAT.

* The biggest problem for developed countries is that jobs are lost and transferred to lower cost countries." According to conservative estimates by Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, granting China most favored nation status drained away 3.2 million jobs, including 2.4 million manufacturing jobs. He pegs the net losses due to our trade deficit with Japan ($78.3 billion in 2013) at 896,000 jobs, as well as an additional 682,900 jobs from the Mexico -U.S. trade-deficit run-up from 1994 through 2010."

* Workers in developed countries like the US face pay-cut demands from employers who threaten to export jobs. This has created a culture of fear for many middle class workers who have little leverage in this global game

* Large multi-national corporations have the ability to exploit tax havens in other countries to avoid paying taxes.

* Multinational corporations are accused of social injustice, unfair working conditions (including slave labor wages, living and working conditions), as well as lack of concern for environment, mismanagement of natural resources, and ecological damage.

* Multinational corporations, which were previously restricted to commercial activities, are increasingly influencing political decisions. Many think there is a threat of corporations ruling the world because they are gaining power, due to globalization.

* Building products overseas in countries like China puts our technologies at risk of being copied or stolen, which is in fact happening rapidly

* The anti-globalists also claim that globalization is not working for the majority of the world. "During the most recent period of rapid growth in global trade and investment, 1960 to 1998, inequality worsened both internationally and within countries. The UN Development Program reports that the richest 20 percent of the world's population consume 86 percent of the world's resources while the poorest 80 percent consume just 14 percent. "

* Some experts think that globalization is also leading to the incursion of communicable diseases. Deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS are being spread by travelers to the remotest corners of the globe.

* Globalization has led to exploitation of labor. Prisoners and child workers are used to work in inhumane conditions. Safety standards are ignored to produce cheap goods. There is also an increase in human trafficking.

* Social welfare schemes or "safety nets" are under great pressure in developed countries because of deficits, job losses, and other economic ramifications of globalization.

Globalization is an economic tsunami that is sweeping the planet. We can't stop it but there are many things we can do to slow it down and make it more equitable.

What is missing?

Leadership - We need politicians who are willing to confront the cheaters. One of our biggest problems is that 7 of our trading partners manipulate their currencies to gain unfair price advantage which increases their exports and decreases their imports. This is illegal under WTO rules so there is a sound legal basis to put some kind of tax on their exports until they quit cheating.

Balanced Trade - Most of our trading partners can balance their trade budgets and even run a surplus. We have not made any effort to balance our trade budget and have run a deficit for more than 30 years resulting in an $11 trillion deficit. The trade deficit is the single biggest job killer in our economy, particularly manufacturing jobs. We need the government to develop a plan to begin to balance our trade deficit even though this is not a political priority in either party.

Trade Agreements - Both the NAFTA and the South Korean Korus trade agreements might have been good for Wall Street and the multi-national corporations but they eliminated jobs in America and expanded our trade deficit. The upcoming Trans Pacific Trade Agreement will do the same thing and Congress should not fast track this bad agreement for a dozen reasons.

Enforcing the rules - China ignores trade rules and WTO laws with reckless abandon. Besides currency manipulation they subsidize their state owned companies to target our markets, and provide funding to their state owned companies that dump their products in America. They also steal our technologies, sell counterfeit versions of our products, and impose tariffs and other barriers anytime they want - as we do nothing to stop them. China does not deserve to be on our most favored nation list and we need to tax their exports to us until they stop these illegal activities.

What is good for third world countries, like Kenya, or countries with tremendous growth, like China, has not been good for American workers. Globalization is deindustrializing America as we continue to outsource both manufacturing blue collar and white collar jobs. Supporters of globalization have made the case that it is good because it has brought low priced imported goods, but they have not matched the decline of wages in the middle class and will not offset the loss of many family wage jobs

Globalization is like being overwhelmed by a snow avalanche. You can't stop it - you can only swim in the snow and hope to stay on top. I would like to make the argument that the US should try a lot harder to swim in the snow and stay on top. We can't stop globalization but there are many policies and strategies we can use to make it more equitable. We can enforce the trade laws, force the competition to play by the same rules, and stop giving our competitors the tools (technology and R& D) to ultimately win the global war.

Mike Collins is the author of Saving American Manufacturing. His website is www.mpcmgt.com.

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A story in the Washington Post said "20 years ago globalization was pitched as a strategy that would raise all boats in poor and rich countries alike. In the U.S. and Europe consumers would have their pick of inexpensive items made by people thousands of miles away whose pay was [...]

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 Globalization Raised Wages of Workers in Vietnam

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 Globalization Raised Wages of Workers in Vietnam

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President Barack Obama recently visited Vietnam and made many deals there, including a deal worth $11 billion and the U.S. will stop embargoing Vietnam on arms. Due to these deals and the Trans Pacific Partnership, 95% of the Vietnamese people answered that they think “trade is good”. This is likely because it decreased unemployment and raised wages. Also, Vietnamese labor is among the cheapest in the world making them attractive to foreigners. With free trade, many nations will invest in Vietnam and raise the Standard of Living. Also, the European Union has grown an aversion to globalization after the terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris.

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It should come as no surprise that US president Barack Obama's first visit to Vietnam was accompanied this week by a flurry of deal-making.

Vietnamese airline VietJet ordered 100 planes from Boeing, a deal worth more than $11 billion. And Obama announced the US would rescind its 50-year arms embargo against Vietnam, which remains dominated by the Communist authoritarian regime that has controlled the country since the US military withdrew in 1975.

Vietnam exported roughly $30 billion of goods to the US in 2015, making the US its top export market. But the US is eager to show that the trading relationship works both ways, and that Vietnam can be a lucrative market for American goods, too.

There are few countries where, conceptually, trade remains as popular as it is in Vietnam. A 2014 survey by Pew Research noted that "the Vietnamese are the most enthusiastic backers of both trade and investment" among the nations included in the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that remains stalled in Congress during a contentious election year. Some 95% of Vietnamese respondents said that "trade is good," with high percentages concurring that trade both creates jobs and raises wages.

Only a decade ago, such views were close to economic gospel among policy makers. But globalization-the blend of policies featuring the free flow of capital, goods and, to a far lesser extent, people, prescribed as a nearly foolproof recipe for economic growth in 1990s-is increasingly running into harsh resistance around the world.

In the European Union, the realities of the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks are putting the economic bloc's commitment to the free movement of people within the EU under stress. Britain's Brexit vote in June risks marking a major turning point against the traditions of post-war European economic and political integration. In China, the country appears to be backsliding on its commitment to slowly open up itself to free flows of capital, as investors withdraw billions from the slowing giant. And in the US, firebrand populist Donald Trump has effectively won the Republican presidential nomination on the back of an unapologetic opposition to trade deals and immigration.

Of course, the situation in those countries are very different from Vietnam, which has a large, low-wage workforce well positioned to benefit mightily from globalization for the foreseeable future. Its cheap labor has been siphoning industrial jobs away from an increasingly expensive China in recent years. And an influx of foreign capital from more well-developed nations such as Japan has financed a flurry of industrial activity. The result has been surge in economic growth and a steep drop in poverty rates, which have fallen from 60% in 1993 to under 14% today, according to the IMF.

That doesn't mean the Vietnamese will be content forever. For Vietnam to continue to deliver rising standards of living, it must find a way to steadily move out of lower-value manufactured goods and diversify into more sophisticated products such as cell phones and microchips, which have powered the next stage of development in other Asian countries.

More pressingly, like every other country, Vietnam must find a way to manage both the slowdown in China and growing anti-trade sentiment elsewhere.

After all, it doesn't matter how popular trade is in Vietnam if the world's largest economies continue to pull back.

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It should come as no surprise that US president Barack Obama's first visit to Vietnam was accompanied this week by a flurry of deal-making. Vietnamese airline VietJet ordered 100 planes from Boeing, a deal worth more than $11 billion. And Obama announced the US would rescind its 50-year arms embargo against Vietnam, which remains dominated by...

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One industry that has been revolutionized by globalization is the logistics industry. With businesses outsourcing and moving across the world, there are many more opportunities for people to have to manage and coordinate sales, deals, and other business ventures. Another industry which is boosted through globalization is the shipping industry. This is because there are more locations across the globe, requiring a way to ship materials to places. For example, products made in China must be shipped to the U.S. in order to be sold. Finally, globalization increases efficiency in businesses and encourages them to make outlets in emerging markets.

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Globalization and Outsourcing: How they have helped logistics and shipping industry

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Globalization played a major role in scaling the industry where players from one part of the world move to another part to do business. With them, they bring new thinking, perspective to the business and they also learn and adopt for the processes where they move.

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Hindu Temple Turned into Vegas-like Tourist Trap

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Hindu Temple Turned into Vegas-like Tourist Trap

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One problem with globalization is that historic and culturally important areas are infected with pieces of Western culture that ruin their beauty. One ancient Hindu temple in India, for example was given a boat ride with dioramas and animatronic robots, similar to Disneyland except with Hindu gods and goddesses. The problem is that something that is important to a people’s religion and culture should not be exploited for economic purposes. Globalization also has hurt local indigenous businesses in India, which is part of their identity. Finally, globalization is destroying the local character and introduces unwelcome foreign trends, styles, and ideas that replace the traditional individuality of their culture.

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As an academic trained in geography, I have for a long time been looking to develop a coherent understanding of this process that is popularly known as 'globalization'. The term has acquired steady popularity from the 1980s onwards and has become as often used - in academic literature, journalistic literature, and lay conversations - as terms like 'modernity' and 'nationalism'. For many, it means that the goods that we consume today in India are made in some other part of the globe; that trends in music, fashion, and food travel quickly around the world, leading to a loss of uniqueness. To many, it means the onslaught of "McDonaldization," or "Coca-colanization."

For many others, globalization has dangerous repercussions in terms of entry of foreign direct investment, and foreign corporations into national markets. Thus eroding and eradicating indigenous business-for example, think of the street protest among small traders of Delhi against the entry of retail giant WalMart in India. My frustration with globalization is that the narratives I discovered were too fragmented. Those that spoke about cultural globalization, erosion of local uniqueness, spread of 'foreign tastes,' often ignored the economic dimensions behind the "McDonaldization" of the world. And, on the other hand, those narratives that talk about foreign investment, mergers, and take-overs of national business have little to say about cultural change. Both narratives often tend to provide a birds-eye view without the satisfaction of a nuanced, grounded, place-based perspective on the culture-economy dialectic of globalization.

As I reflected over these omissions, I had the chance to visit the Akshardham temples in Delhi and Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The spectacle left me dizzy-here was a locally grounded version of globalization brought to fruition in spotless alabaster, occupying hundreds of acres of beautifully manicured gardens and reflecting pools. Inside the temple, one moves from the Himalayan themed cyber-optic landscape of the Mansarovar lake and meditating Lord Swaminarayan, to the plastic jungles of Cherrapunji replete with fake moss, plastic snakes, and electronic owls that rotate their heads a full 360 degree. Then, the Vedic boat ride takes you through the simulated villages of Vedic India, which are actually spectacular dioramas with little historic accuracy. One realizes that the audience has been inducted into a "Vegas-esque" spectacle where religion and fantasy mingle. The temple landscapes theme meticulously followed Disney's model of Disney World, only here Mickey Mouse has been replaced with the gods of the Hindu pantheon.

The audience files from one themed environment to another, like gleeful children who can't wait for the next ride. The production of this spectacle is a million dollar project - bringing globalization to India through the meticulous study of Disney Worlds all over the globe. Globalization, I argue, does not constitute neatly sliced segments of economic change in the market places insulated from cultural fluxes elsewhere. Globalizing realities are best understood through urban spaces like the Akshardham temple complexes in India where economy and culture, religion and fantasy, spiritualism and commodification bleed into one another in the production of contemporary spectacles.

This visit piqued my interest, and I took trips to Akshardham temple complexes in Houston, Irving-Dallas, and Atlanta to understand how globalization is being grounded in the global north. Here, the temple complexes are almost exact replicas of their Indian counterparts, but smaller. But the culture-economic narrative they wish to weave is completely different. In the US, where commodification, consumption, and alienation is rampant, and where the cities and their skyscrapers are the very epitome of the spectacle of capitalism, the Akshardham temples steer clear of any form of "Disneyization". The temple complexes are not themed, no Vedic boat rides or sound and light shows here, but instead, they boast of museums that weave narratives of migrant-patriotism displayed carefully through selective rendering of history. Only Hindu freedom fighters, Hindu poets, and literary geniuses are carefully chosen and displayed to evoke the greatness and hoariness of primarily Hindu-India.

Because the temple complexes lack the patina of age, the museums seem to almost make up for their newness by evoking the ancientness of Indian history. But only a very carefully selected Hindu version of it. The Akshardham temple complexes also house schools, language teaching centers for migrant children, and double-up as cultural social networking sites for women. They also boast of food courts that cook Gujarati-Indian samosas, doklas, and sweets according to the specification of the Swaminrayan traditions. Although the temples are spectacular in their Italian alabaster facades, they attempt to ground the migrant Indian's angst with globalization in more mundane ways than the spectacular theme park narratives of their Indian counterparts. Here nationalism, multiculturalism, patriotism, and narratives of race and gender are negotiated through the everyday spaces of class-rooms where boys and girls are taught separately. Here the racial and cultural 'others' like Hispanic, Black, and White Americans are welcomed into the complex. The temples in the US also become moral and cultural points for passing down the essentials of tradition that are swiftly being washed away by globalization. The second generation migrant youth is expected to get her/his bearings corrected through the sacred spaces of the temple's everyday life, and not get deflected into drinking, or pre-marital sex for instance.

This collage of temple narratives from India and US enabled me to transcend my frustrations with globalization literature. Here I found tangible sites where culture and economy were deeply inflected when it came to chalking the complex tropes of globalization. These complex tropes were a picturesque entry-point into the troubled textures of commodification, alienation, as well as narratives of race, gender, and nationalism.
Featured image credit: McSpicy Paneer Passion, by Divya Thakur. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

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For many others, globalization has dangerous repercussions in terms of entry of foreign direct investment, and foreign corporations into national markets, thus eroding and eradicating indigenous business-for example, think of the street protest among small traders of Delhi against the entry of retail giant WalMart in India.

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 Brexit Would Hurt Globalization and as a Result, Britain

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 Brexit Would Hurt Globalization and as a Result, Britain

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With ‘Brexit’, Britain is currently having a vote on leaving the European Union. Reportedly it is because many think that the economic sovereignty Britain will gain upon leaving the European Union is worth what it will lose due to the loss of free trade within the EU. Also, up to 38,000 workers in London, 11% of the employed people in the city, are from European countries besides Britain. If not a part of the EU, these people’s jobs and the city of London itself will be damaged. In addition, the U.S. is a large trade partner of Britain, and if Britain exits the EU, this will complicate matters between them. Without Europe and the U.S., Britain would lose much money, and it would end a positive aspect of globalization in Britain.

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This article tackles three issues: the impact of Brexit on Britain as a whole, both politically and economically; the impact of Brexit on the European project; and the impact of Brexit on British SMEs. This allows us to have a measured approach to British voters opting to leave the single market on the 23 June referendum.

The impact of Brexit on Britain and globalization: the role of the City of London

The European Union accounts for almost half of Britain's exports and imports. This corresponds to 15% of the country's GDP. EU membership is beneficial to the UK economy, because the EU is a customs union and this lowers trade barriers. This makes goods and services cheaper to British consumers.

The downside of this is that Britain cannot negotiate, on its own, separate trade agreements with non-EU members. Brexit would allow this to happen, because Britain will recover full economic sovereignty. Brexit may also open the way for protectionist, import-substitution policies and a re-launch of the welfare state.

Britain, as an EU member, receives the highest proportion of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment. Of all countries in the world only the USA has a higher stock of FDI. This is mainly happening because of the particular role of the City of London in the structure of the European and global markets, namely the role of the City as a trading platform of financial and global services: in particular, as the Financial Times have pointed out, the City has become the biggest centre for trading the Euro. The City manages one trillion euros of assets in cross-border funds and it dominates the global foreign exchange market, whose daily turnover is about £4 trillion.

Foreign investment banks, Over The Counter (OCT) operations, insurance, shadow banking activity, lawyers, accountants serve the single European market. Some 38,000 people, which is 11% of the City's employees, come from Europe itself.

Overwhelmingly, therefore, the City supports Britain's EU membership, except for a small tribe, and to this belong some hedge funds and brokers whose market is global and who want to break free of any type of EU regulation. This small tribe supports the Leave campaign of UKIP and Boris Johnson. Overall, the City represents the most crucial link in the global chain of financialisation and Britain has to remain in the EU so that the link is not broken.

Brexit will have one clear benefit. Leaving the EU would result in an immediate cost saving, as the country would no longer contribute to the EU budget, and this is some £13 billion a year. However, it also receives £4.5 billion worth of spending and that is about 7% of what the Government spends on the NHS each year.

There are some political aspects too. Brexit would impact on the Scottish issue. And Brexit may also upset Britain's relationship with the USA and, as a consequence, disturb Britain's position within NATO. Moreover, a new transatlantic trade agreement is in the making and Brexit would complicate matters, as Britain would have to re-negotiate both with the EU and the USA, separate treaties.

The impact of Brexit on the European project

Many people avoid talking about it. Many journalists and even academics are keen to say that Brexit would impact negatively on the British economy, but they fail to consider what is probably going to happen to the EU should Brexit occur. I would argue that Brexit would be far more disastrous for the EU than Grexit for the Euro-zone. And if Brexit is successful, then we should wave "good bye" to the EU, along perhaps with the project of globalisation/ financialisation.

It is well known that Germany dominates both the EU and the Euro-zone. It has the strongest economy and pursues an export-led strategy based on a model of low wages and low inflation. This creates imbalances and asymmetries within the Euro-zone dividing Europe into debtor and creditor nations. In this respect, Germany keeps recycling its surpluses in the Euro-zone, imposing regimes of extreme austerity on the periphery, such as Portugal, Spain, Greece and even Italy (see chart). France has also problems dealing with an over-competitive Germany.

But that's not good. Whoever says this is a great picture, he or she does not understand economics. This is a picture that leads to the disintegration rather than integration of the European project. It pushes the nations of Europe into protectionism and a return to national currencies. What is going to happen to the EU and its states if Britain leaves?

The countries with the highest exposure to British capital will suffer most. These countries are the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Portugal and Greece. France and Poland are also exposed to Brexit in specific areas. Germany will suffer too. Poland, in particular, is most exposed through migration and the EU budget.

Just to give some facts: Dutch firms have direct investments worth £180 billion in the UK, earning over £9billion in 2013, which is equivalent to 1.5% of Dutch GDP. Germany has a trade surplus with the UK of over £28 billion. German manufacturers alone export £50 billion to the UK, or 2.4% of GDP. Just imagine what is going to happen to German industry if a new Britain, outside the EU, pursues an import-substitution, protectionist policy. This means that all Japanese and German producers will have to abandon their British factories, with Britain re-building its own car industry and steadily adopting a new industrial policy, moving away from financialisation/globalisation.

A new industrial society will be created and services will cease to be the backbone of the economy. There are almost 750,000 Poles living in the UK. This is the single biggest group of foreign nationals. Their remittances sent back to Poland amount to over £1.1 billion each year. This is a significant boost for the Polish economy.

Brexit and the British SMEs

SMEs account for over 99% of British businesses and over 60% of all private sector employment in the UK. The EU has a considerable remit over Employment Law. European treaties grant the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers the power to make social policy which supersedes national law. Excessive regulation, health and safety requirements and various forms of taxation make some SME leaders highly Eurosceptic. They want Britain to regain power over trade deals, although some 83% of British SMEs do not export at all. Britain has the largest portion of SMEs that export to the USA, some 43%, followed by Italy at 33% and the Netherlands 31%. Some 1/5 of exports of British SMEs go to China. Africa is not a significant destination (although this is not the case with France and Belgium, for example). The EU absorbs the majority of exports of those British SMEs that export. SMEs also benefit from some EU directives, such as the "late payment directive".

The EU has some special programmes for SME financing (e.g. COSME), which would no longer be available if the UK leaves the EU. But the bulk of finance to SMEs is provided by local retail banks, such as the British Business Bank, and leaving the EU would not have a major impact on the availability of finance for SMEs. Yet, leaving the EU may have a longer term impact given the current account deficit of Britain, which is 5% of its GDP. That means that Britain depends on foreign investors. And if Britain is outside the EU, foreign investors may ask for a risk premium, which would be passed on as higher interest rates to SMEs. However, this negative aspect could be avoided if a courageous policy of import-substitution is adopted.

Concluding remarks

The referendum of June 23 is a political, not an economic issue. The Government has to reach out to Labour Party voters in order to win. The Labour Party says it wants to remain in the EU in order to influence and reform it in a progressive, social-democratic direction. The Government says that it has already reformed the EU according to Britain's national interest and the principles of a free market economy and that's the reason why Britain should stay in.

The Leave campaign has two main components. The Right-wing, which is dominated by the former mayor of London, Boris Johnson and the leader of the UKIP, Nigel Farage. There is also a left-wing Leave campaign, "Lexit", which is inspired by the legacy of Tony Benn.

In the referendum of June 23 the British people will vote for what is best for them and the country. Therefore, the result should be respected and followed through by all political forces across the UK. The result should unite and not divide the country. Yet, if Brexit occurs, this may well herald the beginning of the end of globalisation/financialisation and the beginning of a new era in global politics.
This was the Keynote speech at the Thames Gateway Business Awards 2016 Ceremony organised by Archant.

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"Brexit": the real threat to globalization

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This article tackles three issues: the impact of Brexit on Britain as a whole, both politically and economically; the impact of Brexit on the European project; and the impact of Brexit on British SMEs. This allows us to have a measured approach to British voters opting to leave the single market on the 23 June referendum.

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 Latin American Cultures Threatened by Globalization

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 Latin American Cultures Threatened by Globalization

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According to a Peruvian expert in Intangible Cultural Heritage, globalization is threatening Latin American culture. This is because globalization is making all cultures become one because traditional practices being replaced by new technologies. She states that people in Costa Rica are buying similar things instead of different ones that define cultural diversity. She explained that people can buy local handicrafts, but they can buy cheaper goods from China and Taiwan that defeat South American goods in the marketplace. Due to globalization, these traditional, culturally important goods are no longer being used because of cheaper imports and “cooler” goods put in to Costa Rica by globalization.

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One downside of globalization is that many unskilled workers lose their jobs, and the American public is tired of it. Canada lost 334,000 jobs to outsourcing between 1988 and 1994, which is a result of globalization. Deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement give corporations too much power because they allow the corporations to sue the government in court for profits lost due to legislation. Americans are showing they are tired of this by supporting presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who vow to combat globalization. Also, Hillary Clinton even shows concern with the Trans Pacific Partnership, showing that the people are tired of globalization.

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At the height of the battle over the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) the biggest pushers of the deal, the Business Council on National Issues (the 160 largest public corporations) took out full page ads promising the country it would bring "more jobs, better jobs." It was intended to counter the effective campaign of opponents who warned Canadians that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs would be lost. Opponents won the hearts and minds battle but lost the 1988 election on the issue thus making Canada and the US "free trade" guinea pigs. Hundreds of such deals have been signed since in spite of the fact that the critics were right: Canada lost some 270,000 jobs as a direct result.

Since 1988, the promoters of these investment protection agreements have held sway in large part because of massive media support. But almost 30 years after the first experiment there are signs that, finally, citizens around the world are beginning to ask the uncomfortable question: just who do governments govern for? Regrettably, that question is being asked more in the EU and the US than it is in Canada. Nonetheless, opposition to such deals in these two powerhouse economies could save us from more of them- specifically the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Canada's proposed deal with the EU - the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). If the US-EU deal (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - TTIP ) fails CETA is unlikely to survive.

So-called trade deals empower transnational corporations by radically compromising the nation-state's capacity for democratic governance. This emasculation of democracy is accomplished in large part through the investor-state provisions which allow corporations to directly sue government for profits lost due to environmental, health or other legislation. Governments sign these agreements enthusiastically promising jobs and growth. But, while it has taken almost two generations, millions of American workers simply no longer believe the rhetoric.

Increasing grim inequality as revealed the broken promise and American workers are pissed. That is in large part what drive the mind-boggling Trump phenomenon in the US: it's not exactly class warfare but Trump supporters sense the system as a whole, political and economic, is truly broken. And the support for Bernie Sanders is as close to class conflict as the US ever gets. For the first time in over 30 years, these corporate rights deals are a hot US election issue with all three remaining candidates opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

But perhaps equally important, the state apparatus itself is showing cracks in its own consensus. This has taken the form of leaks from within the US government about the TTIP and a government study of the benefits of the TPP to the US. Both present genuine threats to the future of these agreements in the US. And defeats in the US could be the death knell for these deals everywhere.

The leak regarding the TTIP came right on the heels of the typical reassuring noises from the Obama administration regarding protection for labour and the environment standards in the TTIP. According to an article - The Free-Trade Consensus Is Dead - in the New Republic magazine: "..documents leaked by Greenpeace Netherlands revealed that U.S. negotiators working on a trade deal with the European Union have actually been pressuring their trading partners to lower those same standards." The leak was a revelation to the French trade Minister who declared that the talks were "likely to stop altogether" as a result. (In 1998 France killed the Multilateral Agreement on Investment - the largest deal ever conceived.)

The second nail in the coffin of free trade consensus in the US came from a U.S. International Trade Commission' s (ITC) analysis of the benefits the US could expect from the even larger deal, the TPP. The report, released this past week, will be difficult for promoters to explain away:

"...the ITC estimates a worsening balance of trade for 16 out of 25 U.S. agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors... Indeed, output in the manufacturing sector would be $11.2 billion lower with TPP than without it in 2032... the proposed 12-nation trade deal will increase the U.S. global trade deficit by $21.7 billion by 2032."

There is no definitive way to identify when an ideology begins to lose its grip on the public discourse but could this clear resistance (it is even more developed and vociferous in EU countries) be the beginning of the end of corporate globalization? I am not suggesting that developed country governments are going to suddenly return to the good old days of the post-war social contract. But what has allowed them to proceed for three decades with political impunity has been the power of ideology to overwhelm evidence and reason. Neo-liberalism has enjoyed hegemonic status for so long it has been almost impossible for ordinary citizens to imagine anything different. But now they can - not just because of political outliers Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but because of Hillary Clinton, the quintessential purveyor of that very ideology.

Once members of the political elite begin to question the high priests of free trade the spell is broken and all sorts of alternative political narratives present themselves. It takes an accumulation of unlikely suspects breaking with the consensus before that happens and we have already seen some high profile defectors from the TPP - including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist Jeffrey Sachs and in Canada RIM co-founder Jim Balsillie. At first the Teflon seemed to hold but there is always a lag time when it comes to cultural change and their interventions are still playing out.

In Canada, regrettably, Balsillie isn't likely to be joined any time soon by conventional members of our corporate elite. It is the nature of ideology that if the medicine doesn't work, increase the dose. Unless more Canadians speak out on these investment protection agreements and get behind their counterparts in the US and EU the Liberal government will keep prescribing the same medicine.

MURRAY DOBBIN, now living in Powell River, BC has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for over forty years. He can be reached at murraydobbin@shaw.ca

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Are We Witnessing the Beginning of the End of Globalization?

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At the height of the battle over the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) the biggest pushers of the deal, the Business Council on National Issues (the 160 largest public corporations) took out full page ads promising the country it would bring "more jobs, better jobs."

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These sources argue that globalization has made the world worse.

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These sources argue that globalization has made the world better.