Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization

Preface

xiii Preface A  , the December 16, 1773, meeting in Old South Church in Boston and the November 26, 1999, teach-in in Seattle’s Benaroya Symphony Hall have little in common. More than five thousand colonists, about a third of Boston’s population, crowded into Old South Church. About half that number crowded into the twenty-five-hundred-seat Symphony Hall. The participants at both meetings focused on trade. The colonists wanted to shape the mother country’s policies to increase trade, while most attendees at the teach-in focused on the costs of trade and globalization. The colonists learned of the December meeting through pamphlets, posters, and by word of mouth; the trade agreement critics who packed Symphony Hall learned about the meeting through the Internet, the press, E-mail, and by mailed invitations. Moreover, citizens around the wired world could watch the proceedings through the modern miracle of Web-casting. The colonists argued over what to do about three ships carrying tea from the East Indies. They liked their tea—it had long been an important component of the Anglo-American diet. But in 1773, the British Parliament passed an act designed to save the East India Company from bankruptcy. The law required duties to be paid on the tea and returned to the company. It was one of a series of taxes that were placed on and then removed from the colonists.The colonists resented the tax as unfair as well as resented their lack of control over the home country’s policies. The colonists were deeply divided as to what to do about Britain’s trade policies. While some colonists said that Governor Thomas Hutchinson should send the tea back to England, others worried about confronting the British. Still others in the back of the room hinted at a more aggressive strategy. They warned that sometime soon, the “Mohawks” (colonists disguised as Indians) would come and make Boston Harbor smell like, look like, and taste like a teapot. In their view, this violent strategy of harbor and street protests were necessary because Britain had undermined the Preface xiv colonists’ democratic rights by empowering one corporation at the expense of the colonists. The individuals who came to the December 1999 teach-in, in contrast , did not come from one city or nation. They came from India, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, Chile, the Philippines, the United States, and even Great Britain. Almost all the speakers noted that globalization , which they described as “corporate-led” and directed, had hurt the planet, undermined democratically elected governments, and had a regressive effect on human rights and workers’ rights. They condemned the policies of national governments and international organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Most of the participants thought nonviolent street protests were an appropriate strategy to deal with such instruments of corporate-led globalization. Although miles of distance, new technologies, and 226 years separated the two meetings, the participants in both meetings tackled the same topic—how trade and globalization affected other important policy goals—whether democracy, sovereignty, protecting the environment , promoting human rights, or encouraging equitable economic growth. I believe a review of the history of that debate may provide scholars with additional insights into how the public, in concert with policymakers, may best govern the global economy. This book highlights the “lost” history of citizen attempts to influence how globalization is regulated—whether through trade agreements or other regulatory policies. This history is not really lost, but it seems to have been forgotten by policymakers and even the activists themselves. Thus, this book reminds us that this debate was central to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, the development of a national economy in the late nineteenth century, and even the development of the global system of rules that govern trade and investment. I will show that except for biotechnology, little that is new has emerged in the debate over globalization. Globalization can be defined as the growing social, political, and economic integration of the United States with other nations in the world. The United States is increasingly linked to other nations because of deliberate policy choices (such as trade and investment liberalization) and technological changes (whether satellites, the Internet, refrigeration, or supersonic jets) that bridge distance and time. Every day Americans see evidence of globalization , whether our headlines blare the spread of West Nile Virus (new to the North American continent) or the new German American multinational, the...