GOOD-BYE GLOBALIZATION, WELCOME BACK PROTECTIONISM
The experiment of globalization has been a failure. Not even the Third World nations who were huge beneficiaries of industrialization have seen their countries make huge improvements to their internal infrastructure where the lot of the masses enjoyed better living standards, education and healthcare. Look at what is happening to China. Millions of poor “undocumented” workers left their family-owned rice paddy fields to make their “fortunes” as construction and factory workers in the big cities are now returning to their homes in the same numbers, as penniless as when they originally made the move.
One of the huge problems was trade became only one way. China, India and their friends couldn’t export enough of their junk to us but were simply not interested in buying anything back. They were protectionists. They are allowed their trade surpluses to grow in the hope they would become economic power houses and this way in their own minds, they would start controlling the world. For a while it worked. China moved into Africa, particularly countries that had oil and minerals in the ground, using diplomacy only Chinese are adept at and offered all sorts of “incentives” in the hope they would manipulate their mineral wealth into Chinese hands. To a degree, there was some success, but now the recession has hit China so hard, it is now mired in huge internal problems, which demands its time and resources. Civil unrest in China could rise to the levels of another revolution.
Like China, the western world is fighting for its very survival. The only way out is to create jobs. That means re-investment back into their home countries and governments setting up tariffs to protect key local industry. And that is why, sad but true, I believe the era of protectionism is returning and unless the rules of globalization are completely re-written, the Third World from the top down will revert to life as it was fifty years ago.
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