The unions -- whose express purpose is working on behalf of union members -- would seem to be a natural source of resistance to globalism. But even in the midst of an economic downdraft, union leaders are reluctant to explicitly state that globalism -- unfettered free trade -- is bad for working people and local economies.
A new stink around Indian steel pipe is being imported to a town where steel mills have been shut down is the perfect passion play to see all the dynamics of growing anti-globalism (or pro-localism, is you want to play the pro-/anti- game).
[via Pipe Made in India Incenses an Illinois Steel Town - NYTimes.com bu Louis Utichelle]
Hundreds of sections of imported steel pipe have been moving into Granite City for use in an oil pipeline. The steel mill, meanwhile, has been shut since December for lack of orders — the first time in its 130-year history — and nearly 2,000 workers are on furlough.
“I was very mad when I saw they were imported; I wondered why this pipe had not been made in the United States,” said Mr. Rains, who is 61. Once the train passed, Mr. Rains, still active in union affairs, hastened to the union hall to spread the word.
The United Steelworkers union has been trying ever since to galvanize the Granite City story into national outrage over steel imports, raising suggestions of protectionism in the process. The union and its workers want steel pipe for future projects to be made in the United States, creating domestic jobs.
With the economy in tatters, top corporate executives often state privately that they fear this downturn will fuel public sentiment against foreign-made products. Indeed, in February — before Mr. Rains made his discovery — 5,000 people marched through the streets of this steel town in support of a strong “Buy America” clause in the $787 billion stimulus bill then before Congress.
The imported pipe has inflamed that sentiment. The union filed an antidumping lawsuit in Washington last Wednesday against tubular and pipe steel imported from China. A day earlier, Local 1899 staged a rally here, drawing more than 500 people to the same field where the lengths of “Indian pipe,” as the people here call them, have been stacked.
“The steel pipe behind us is a symbol of what has gone wrong in this country,” one of the speakers declared, arguing in effect that a lax Congress and greedy businesspeople, as in Wall Street, had brought three months of layoff, so far, to more than 10 percent of Granite City’s work force. The crowd cheered, and some chanted back, “No more greed.”
The union’s hope is that the Indian pipe episode will provoke a broad outcry, and similar finger-pointing, forcing Congress to tighten trade rules and pressuring companies that import steel to buy more from domestic suppliers instead.
[...]
The United Steelworkers asserts that free trade is not the issue. The union’s leaders endorse that, as do the chief executives of nearly every multinational company. [emphasis mine] What the Indian pipe represents, the union argues — and it is joined in this by steel industry executives — is a violation of fair trade. They contend that generous government subsidies allow Indian and Chinese manufacturers to “dump” steel in this country at prices below the fair market value.
“Other countries point the finger at the U.S. and say we are protectionist,” said Nancy Gravatt, a spokeswoman for the American Iron and Steel Institute, representing mill owners, “and then you look at the details in the other countries, and they are not playing by the rules at all.”
Free Trade is based on the assumption that markets will self-correct, but in a world where the rich companies actively block true costs of production showing up on price tags and balance sheets, the markets are a political construct, as artificial as Second Life or Disneyland.
So, why do the United Steelworker's leaders support free trade? Why are they having to appeal to 'fair trade' jargon and anti-dumping laws, and argue that importing low-cost Indian steel is illegal, rather than just being bad policy?
I think the problem -- at its core -- is that the premises for free trade, going back to the start of the industrial era, have not yet been adequately pulled apart and debunked. Both political parties and the media have adopted a pro-free trade (pro-globalism) stance, and deemed that anti-globalism is illegitimate.
But the premises of free trade are too diffuse to ever work in practice. Outsourcing steel development to India or other developing countries 'works' economically because the steel developers can take advantage of lax regulation in distant lands to pollute and exploit cheap labor, while the US society has to absorb the costs of local steel workers laid off. The steel companies have no ongoing obligation to support those that they fire, here, and in a uniquely American fashion, former steel workers are left to scramble or fall.
Free trade is a game rigged so that global corporations can arbitrage over all sorts of cost factors, based on a patchwork quilt of labor and environmental laws, and nearly always choosing what makes the most money.
Shouldn't our core principle be doing what causes the least harm?
The 'fair trade' term indicates that some have attempted to move in that direction, away from the unbridled excesses of free trade. But the unions should step forward and baldly state that free trade is inherently damaging to the world as a whole, and to local economies everywhere. A different sort of trade is needed, where the world is seen as a closed system, that all the inputs and outputs have to be tallied and associated with the costs of goods and services, and that the presumption should be that local production of goods, foods, and services is inherently better than globalism: less damaging, more open to inspection and safety, and relying on fewer connections in the rickety financial networks we have inherited.
We need a notion of scalar trade, where transportation, work displacement, and ecological costs are all factored in, and not neatly dropped out by corporate accountants. Someone has to do the full reckoning, and today's businesses -- and even our governments -- don't seem ready to do so.
Free Trade is based on the assumption that markets will self-correct, but in a world where the rich companies actively block true costs of production showing up on price tags and balance sheets, the markets are a political construct, as artificial as Second Life or Disneyland.
It would be good in the unions could step forward and say this, but perhaps their worldview has become too closely aligned with the global businesses that they have co-evolved with.
