Pakistan's Marxist MP, SE Asians vs. RCEP, Polish Amazon Workers, Open Letter from Mideast Women, So Africa Workers Summit, Post-Election Turkey
The imbalances and inequities generated by the global economy cannot be tackled by protecting a few politically well-connected industries, using manifestly ridiculous national security considerations as an excuse. Such protectionism is a gimmick, not a serious agenda for trade reform.
Corporate America might regret calling the president’s bluff.
It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch? Today global capitalism is in a period of long-term stagnation following the global financial crisis. The newer protests represent a far broader disenchantment with capitalism than the protests of the 2000s. The building blocks of an alternative economic model are there - sustainable development, de-growth, and de-globalization.
After years of struggle, El Salvador workers have won a victory with a new minimum wage that has made an enormous impact in people's lives. Corporate power has not given up, preferring to pay starvation wages they are attempting to roll back the gains made.
UE's General Executive Board denounced Trump's racist and jingoistic proposals for a renegotion of NAFTA and instead called for a new set of trade policies that prioritize workers common interests and relies on international solidarity as its cornerstone. Any renegotiation of NAFTA must be oriented around the improvement of workers’ lives and protection of the environment focused on those regions of the continent where conditions are the most desperate.
The OECD should be in the business of helping people build democratic institutions that give them economic and political voice—guardians of equality and democracy. The alternative to addressing wage stagnation and the status of working people in the global economy is not more of the same elite dominated globalization. The alternative is an escalating crisis where the false promises of authoritarianism and racism threaten to overwhelm the democratic ideal.
The company is doing what’s made sense for years—and what the Bush and Obama administrations made possible.
The system is rigged — by an evolving form of capitalism that undermines genuine ‘free trade’. Rising inequality is fomenting anger and desperation. A revolt is coming, but its direction is uncertain. Some fall prey to neo-fascist appeals of Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen. They will not be stopped by scorn alone. We need a progressive alternative focused on building a new income distribution system for the citizenry, not for the oligarchy.
Although the people of El Salvador won a victory when a ruling denied a company compensation for a mine that popular opposition preventing a mine from operating on their land, they should never had to go through this seven-year legal battle in the first place. Such “investor rights” are the most extreme example of excessive power granted to corporations through trade agreements and are the reason the TPP must be defeated.
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