[Eisophca]

Quote: Developed Economic Advancement

A resolution to develop industry around the world.


Category: Advancement of Industry


Area of Effect: Protective Tariffs


Proposed by: Belarum

Description: General Assembly of the United Nations,

REFFERRING to Section I of Resolution #49 (Rights and Duties of UN States) in order to better illustrate this resolution,

DISTURBED by the many UN nations which have overlooked and directly circumvented the authority of previous UN legislation through a recent increase in free trade initiatives,

FURTHER DISTURBED by the adverse effects of free trade in a many number of UN nations, which includes the exploitation of labor in many underdeveloped nations, the crippling of smaller businesses which cannot compete with multinational corporations with access to cheap labor in poorer nations, and massive job loss in developed nations, which has been proven to lead to increased rates of crime, poverty, and drug abuse,

DETERMINED, through this resolution, to enact legislation which can lend a helping hand to those displaced through free trade and outline an effective plan to advance the economies of individual nations,

MANDATES the following:

1) All UN nations have the authority to enact protective tariffs on foreign goods and services in order to protect their labor forces and industries, given these tariffs are not forbidden by any previous UN legislation;

2) All UN nations have the authority to enact embargoes on foreign goods and services in order to protect their labor forces and industries, or as a means of protesting the acts of nations, given these embargoes are not forbidden by any previous UN legislation;

3) All UN nations have the authority to set their own taxation policies on all foreign goods and services entering their nation, given these taxation policies are not forbidden by any previous UN legislation.

AFFIRMING that the option to trade freely with another nation should be left to the discretion of each nation engaged or desiring to engage in such actions, and that this legislation may be invoked by individual nations which seek not to participate in future UN free trade initiatives,

ENCOURAGING the practice of ?fair trade?, which is defined as an equitable and fair relationship between the marketers in one nation to the producers in another, actively working to provide the labor of producer nations with livable wages, hours, benefits, and opportunities for advancement,

HEREBY enacts Developed Economic Advancement.

Co-authored by Tarmsden[/quote]

If you would like to know, this resolution goes up to vote and either passes or fails after Rights of the Disabled. I hope someone or a few people can post here with their opinions. I wonder when the next time someone repeals something will be. It would be interesting to have a repeal, or even just another resolution. I'll have you know Yelda's trying to do a repeal of ALC. It would be a vicious debate, one I wouldn't want to get into myself if that gets to queue.

[Sober Thought]

I vote YES (i.e., let this resolution pass and reject any repeal of it).

Trade is not an issue that the UN must get involved in, but it obviously nibbles away at it in such areas as property as a human right, conditions under which trade can be refused, international safety issues (what ever happened the UN Transport Safety Agency?), etc.

I am happy with the work Groot Gouda did with our regional FTA (which if one reads it, is more like a customs union and proto-confederal union like the RL EU), and I happily signed it. However, "free trade" ain't free and sometimes is not even trade. Please indulge me as a I ramble at great length, as I am wont to do.

Classical economists, notably Ricardo and Smith, praised free trade and its ability to improve living standards around the world. Many of their arguments still make sense, but understandably they neglected to address so many aspects of free trade which were not evident in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Ricardo phrased it in terms of efficiency, citing Portugese efficiency in port-winemaking and British efficiency in woolens. Unfortunately, a nation which lives solely by free trade also dies by free trade.

In the 1830s, Britain repealed the Corn (i.e., cereal grain) Laws, which distorted free trade by propping up an inefficient domestic agribusiness at the expense of foreign growers. Unfortunately, it meant that Britain was vulnerable to naval blockade in time of war, as they discovered in both World Wars. They resorted to drafing Land Army girls, ploughing up economically unviable pasture, etc. Had Britain retained the Corn Laws, or retained the most justifiable portions of them, the country would not be so vulnerable in times of crisis or war. "Free trade" economics also exacerbated the Irish potato starvation, because freetraders threw up their hands and said government was powerless to intervene against market forces. Food is one vital national security good, but so are more obvious ones like weapons.

Most European countries, no matter how tiny, support an astonishingly large military-industrial complex -- even supposedly pacifist and neutral Sweden and Switzerland. Clearly, no economic reason exists for this; it is purely in a country's national interest since relying on other countries for one's weapons is a good way to find one's self short when one really needs them. The neutrals were especially emphatic, correctly reasoning that using another country's armament makes one vulnerable to politico-military manipulation. Cf. post-Shah Iran and its possession of useless American weapons.

An unfortunate biproduct of a multiplicity of national military-industrial complexes is the economic effect of driving the price of weaponry down too far, and export to countries where it shouldn't go. It is ironic that both Britain and Argentina used the Belgian-designed Fabrique Nationale Fusil automatique legere, Argentina used French-made Exocets to sink French-allied British ships, and both belligerents used US-made air-to-air missiles. Thus, my response to one of the daily issues: keep the arms industry going, but carefully vet the end users so you don't get killed by your own weapons.

Another solution has happily presented itself, namely with two or more European military (and in many cases, civilian) corporations getting together in consortia for specific projects. Even with language and domestic political considerations adding to the economic strain, these are remarkably successful vetures like the Tornado fighter and Gazelle helicopter, also promoting NATO interoperability and economies of scale not possible in one-nation only ventures.

I am a RL Canadian, and Canada has had a long history of servile, preferential, managed, protectionist and supposedly "free" trade with its political and economic betters, first Britain and then the United States. It has had inescapable economic and political impact on Canada's historical development. Servile trade was that which Britain conducted with all of its colonies and dependencies; normally, it meant export of raw goods and import of finished goods from the motherland, and resulted in highly compartmentalised benefits and losses to bosses and peons.

When Britain bowed to Ricardo, some vestige of servile trade remained under a system of "imperial preferences," in which foreign countries were divided into first-class (Commonwealth) or second-class (the heathens) categories. This allowed a certain amount of industrial manufacturing develop outside Birmingham and the Industrial Midlands, including in my emotional hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, a.k.a. Steeltown. This regime survived until the 1930s, when the Great Depression caused trade barriers to go up all over the world.

Post-war, Canada realised who was buttering its bread and threw in its lot with the United States. "Managed trade" was reborn in the Autopact, signed by Lyndon Johnson and Lester Pearson, and ensured that Canada had automotive manufacturing even if the auto industry itself lived across the river in Detroit. Erroneously called "free trade," the Autopact was used as the model for the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement upon which the 1988 Canadian election was fought.

I was sympathetic to free trade and its Ricardian origins, but I couldn't vote for a pro-free trade party because the only one was led by a doofus. In five years, Brian Mulroney took a majority government caucus of 148 seats and turned it into 2 [sic] -- or rather let his successor be the fallwoman -- without official legislative status as a party. Brian Mulroney remains the most reviled prime minister in Canadian history, head and shoulders above alcoholic John A. Macdonald, conscriptionist Robert Borden, occultist Mackenzie King, playboy Pierre Trudeau and even thoroughly corrupt Jean Chretien.

Anti-free traders -- the usual pinko NDPers, but also plenty of more centrist and even right wing nationalists -- argued that the FTA would be expanded to Mexico, lead to job loss, cause deindustrialisation, and most importantly wouldn't save Canada from the whims of U.S. trade policy. Each of these criticisms in turn was proved correct. The most recent "trade negotiations" Canada conducted with the U.S. concerned softwood lumber. The U.S. imposed a quota and retained illegally (as determined by several separate NAFTA dispute resolution mechanism decisions) collected duties. This means that free trade is free for the dominant partner to decide if it's a fair trade.

In short, if "free trade" means free trade only when it is in the interests of the largest partner, then I am against what is effectively the law of the jungle. Maintaining an honest if inefficient international trade regime which has no pretentions to be free is better than having somebody tell you it's raining as they piddle on your shoes.

I have neglected entirely the issues of "fair trade" or "economic imperialism," both of which deserve comment from somebody more passionate about them than I am. Here too I have my opinions. "Fair trade" with regards to a living wage and worker-friendly condidtions is a laudable goal but practically impossible to impose on any politically-based trade regime. A better approach would be to use classical economics tools, say by setting tariffs by accounting for pollution (a la Kyoto) and measuring explicit cost offloading.

"Economic imperialism" is such a loaded term that I doubt any satisfactory middle ground could be found; however, even here a strict prohibition on international extortion as an adjunct of international trade policy would be possible. For instance, one could spell out that economic embargoes could only be conducted in response to trade issues as identified by multilateral agencies or as part of UN Security Council sanctions. The strongarm tactics the United States is currently using in its so-called Middle Eastern free trade initiative are criminal. What Dr. Rice effectively says to each country "negotiating" on its own the the Big Eagle, "Look what we did to Iraq. If you don't want that coming soon to a (combat) theatre near you, agree to sovereignty-stripping 'economic liberalisation' measures which were previously applied to poor countries but you managed to avoid so far by being so oil-rich. Now take it like a good little boy and smile."

I love the ideals of the United States, and its govenment and people should be rightly proud of them. It is no accident that Gene Roddenberry relied heavily on the United States and the United Nations (HQ'd in the US and in whom it had an early and emphatic booster, fuelled by League of Nations-induced guilt and a recognition that multilateralism really WAS the way to go) when creating his United Federation of Planets. "No taxation without representation," "Of the people, by the people and for the people," "The four freedoms," Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points," "All men are created equal," "Emancipation Proclamation," "Bill of Rights," "Miranda warning," etc. -- they all rightly have resonance far beyond their borders.

Many US-bashers will cite only examples of failure or hypocrisy, e.g., "All men are created equal" vs. "three-fifths 'compromise,'" "14 Points" vs. no League of Nations, but they miss the point. The US has set the bar openly and high, so of course its failings are all the more public and more glaring. And when a bull is invited to run, not just run amok in, the china shop, people rightly sit up, take notice, titter and hector. It's what concerned friends do, and I wish Blair had used some of his political capital with Bush to keep the latter closer to planet earth, but what can I say when my country's new PM Harper is begging for a spot in the sycophantic retinue?

So, to summarise, free trade good in most cases, "free trade" bad in all cases. Clear as mud? :blink:

[Antrium]

ST...that may be one of the longest posts ever written on this forum :worship:

I think I'm going to vote FOR on this one, although I'm not going to vote in the poll just yet.

[Eisophca]

I'd like to point out that UN-mandated free trade could be useful in some cases, and we may not want to rule it out in all cases like this says. An example is the recycling one, where free trade was mandated in order to promote recycling.
Sober Thought In short, if "free trade" means free trade only when it is in the interests of the largest partner, then I am against what is effectively the law of the jungle. Maintaining an honest if inefficient international trade regime which has no pretentions to be free is better than having somebody tell you it's raining as they piddle on your shoes.[/quote]
That's not true in NS, though. Since compliance with resolutions is automatic, no one could violate them at all.

[Sober Thought]

Antrium Posted on May 26 2006, 09:21 PM

Quote: ST...that may be one of the longest posts ever written on this forum 

I think I'm going to vote FOR on this one, although I'm not going to vote in the poll just yet. [/quote]

Nah, I've written longer ones. I'm a recovering rambler but until recently I've kept my condition mostly under control.

Plus free trade is one of the hot-button issues for Canadians going back to 1854 and 1911 when the Conservative Party was against it, and in 1988 and 1993 when it was for it. For a readable academic summary of it, click on Canada-United States Reciprocity Treaties. One problem of being an extreme moderate is having to argue both sides, which means taking at least twice as long (plus producing a bilingual dictionary, e.g., "blood sucking capitalist" = "fine upstanding businessperson," "reactionary economic imperialism" = "farsighted international development", then offering some more netural terms).

[Sober Thought]

Ceorana Posted on May 27 2006, 01:15 AM
Quote: I'd like to point out that UN-mandated free trade could be useful in some cases, and we may not want to rule it out in all cases like this says. An example is the recycling one, where free trade was mandated in order to promote recycling.

QUOTE (Sober Thought)
In short, if "free trade" means free trade only when it is in the interests of the largest partner, then I am against what is effectively the law of the jungle. Maintaining an honest if inefficient international trade regime which has no pretentions to be free is better than having somebody tell you it's raining as they piddle on your shoes.


That's not true in NS, though. Since compliance with resolutions is automatic, no one could violate them at all. [/quote]

I'm not sure that recycling requires free trade to work. In fact, Ricardian free trade would almost certainly undermine recycling efforts. Richer countries or those with more regulations against pollution could simply export their wastes to poorer or more lax jurisdictions. David Ricardo would consider this difference a matter of efficiency.

As a RL Canadian, I am ashamed to say that this is what we engage in. Toronto, my current home and the largest city in Canada, exports its garbage down Highway 401 to dump in Michigan instead of finding a better solution in Canada. This is only feasible under a free trade agreement, in which a country has surrendered its sovereign right to refuse "imports" if one may refer to refuse as an import. :angry: And in keeping with the softwood lumber shenanigans, Michigan and other border states were enacting de facto bans on Canadian garbage to circumvent NAFTA. Its funny that the U.S. states bordering Mexico don't feel quite so strongly about exporting garbage.

You're mostly right about your second point, Ceorana, namely that NS UN has the Compliance Ministry to keep everybody on the straight and narrow. However, the Ministry cannot apply a resolution if the latter's meaning is not clear or consistent. For instance, if the current resolution passes, how can the CM enforce:

"ENCOURAGING the practice of ?fair trade?, which is defined as an equitable and fair relationship between the marketers in one nation to the producers in another, actively working to provide the labor of producer nations with livable wages, hours, benefits, and opportunities for advancement,"

Again, fair trade in my estimation is as laudable goal as free trade, but is impossible to define or regulate except at its margins. Classical and neo-classical economists are against the very idea of a legislated minimum wage, let alone one which actually resulted in "livable wages." This is why a person making minimum wage in my province pays nothing in income taxes and is classified by most official government measurements and virtually all those of NGOs as living below the poverty line.

Similarly, how can the CM force compliance when a resolution includes within it the right to opt out of any future FTA-like provision? It would require and even greater number of silly repeals than occur now.

[Eisophca]

Recycling doesn't need total free trade to work, but that's not what the recycling resolution did. It encouraged companies to recycle by banning protectionism on them, so companies would have an incentive to recycling because of reduced tariffs on recycled products. This resolution would effectively cripple any resolution that wanted to go about promoting recycling in that manner.

And what I meant about the CM was that there wouldn't be a problem with big nations abusing free trade agreements over small nations, because the UN could define the terms. Similarly, it is possible to have free trade strictly defined, because we have a binding UN to regulate it.

Quote: Similarly, how can the CM force compliance when a resolution includes within it the right to opt out of any future FTA-like provision? It would require and even greater number of silly repeals than occur now.[/quote]
That's assuming this proposal passes.

[Sober Thought]

Ceorana Posted on May 27 2006, 03:17 PM

Quote: Recycling doesn't need total free trade to work, but that's not what the recycling resolution did. It encouraged companies to recycle by banning protectionism on them, so companies would have an incentive to recycling because of reduced tariffs on recycled products. This resolution would effectively cripple any resolution that wanted to go about promoting recycling in that manner.

And what I meant about the CM was that there wouldn't be a problem with big nations abusing free trade agreements over small nations, because the UN could define the terms. Similarly, it is possible to have free trade strictly defined, because we have a binding UN to regulate it.

Quote: Similarly, how can the CM force compliance when a resolution includes within it the right to opt out of any future FTA-like provision? It would require and even greater number of silly repeals than occur now. [/quote]
That's assuming this proposal passes. [/quote]

Thanks for the info on the recycling initiative; it must have flown under the radar or appeared while I was CTE'd. Yes, this is a very positive use of free trade in which recycling is encouraged by forbidding certain trade restraints. I doubt there are many other examples, but you clearly identify a major weakness in the resolution as drafted -- enough for me to reconsider my first response (not that it mattered since I was in the minority anyway).

Even with the CM, meddling can occur; but I take your point that it is at most an inconvenience rather than a reall problem (again, food for thought).

Your last point correct and written like a true partisan, and my hat goes off to you. I especially like being an extreme moderate because I can, e.g., with the secular government value, and frequently do argue with myself, often long after other people have decided and moved on. Remember too I'm the nation that alone in the IDU voted against the Nobel Peace Prize resolution.

[Enn]

I like watching economists squirm. That's my main reason for voting FOR. But that doesn't mean the region has to vote for this.