Banned wagon: global
A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade In a speech in Ontario a fortnight ago, Leo W. Gerard made an eloquent appeal for the formation of a new 'worldwide movement for social justice to cure the ills of globalisation'. 'Two decades of so-called "free" trade,' he said, 'have created a new global oligarchy, an oligarchy that's amassed increasingly obscene levels of wealth the old-fashioned way — by stealing it. . . . The results speak for themselves. Since globalisation has taken hold, income growth in Latin America —which averaged nearly 4 per cent per year from 1960 to 1980 — has come to a virtual standstill, increasing by less than 6 per cent in the past 20 years. African incomes declined by 23 per cent in the same period, wiping out nearly all the gains made prior to globalisation.'
So who is this Leo Gerard, who sets himself up as a great champion of the world's poor, and possesses such insight into the workings of the global economy? A United Nations official? A visiting economics professor at the University of Bulawayo? He is not. Mr Gerard is international president of the United Steelworkers of America, which recently persuaded President Bush to place import tariffs on foreign steel in order to protect the United States' ailing steel industry.
How this trade barrier, unashamedly designed to protect workers in a rich country. is supposed to aid steelworkers in poor countries with growing steel industries isn't quite clear. Nor does Mr Gerard's claim that "globalisation' has impoverished the Third World quite stack up. The implication that the Third World has been plunged into poverty by two decades of free trade is a nonsense. In 2000,34 per cent of imports from the Third World to the First were subject to the kind of punitive tariffs which protect Mr Gerard's workers, a figure which has grown sharply in the past decade as Western trading blocs seek to force out competition.
Sadly, at present, the likes of Mr Gerard are having their way. Third World producers are being squeezed out of the Western markets which could enrich them, thanks to anti-globalisers who speak on behalf of the world's poor but act on behalf of the rich.
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