As Donald Trump’s presidency begins to unfold, the narrative of the globalists, particularly as delivered by President Barack Obama and other world leaders, is beginning to crumble. In a multitude of ways, the jig of the globalists is up as their philosophies have been repudiated with the election of Trump, the passage of Brexit and other timely political events.
Riding a tide of populist discontent with the status quo — a status quo that has seen real wages and income stagnate or even fall for the last 20-odd years — American voters elected a man who finally put his foot down and said on an international stage: “Enough.”
And with his decisive victory, the sentiment of American voters was brought in line with those of the UK and other European nations, where populist feeling has been summed up in referendum after referendum and election after election.
Only the major governments of France, Germany and Italy (and perhaps for not much longer for the latter) are left without populist leaders in the style of Trump, and many say these nations are only the last holdouts to acquiesce to an unstoppable movement that’s sweeping the world and will hopefully culminate in a restoration of jobs, wages and national sovereignty not just for the United States, but for other nations as well.
With this wave, billionaires and globalist corporations have begun to feel the intense pressure of millions of voters who for too long have seen their productivity rises produce real income gains only for those at the very top — the owners of the conglomerates, the trading companies and the factories that have written the unfair rules and the free-trade agreements such as NAFTA and the TPP — agreements that have pushed labor to the nations where it’s cheapest and production to where work and safety standards are the lowest.
The shock election of Republican Donald Trump has stopped the seemingly inexorable movement of globalism in its tracks. What once seemed inescapable now looks terribly weak and unstable as the media and globalist-aligned forces have been called out on their game of trickery and deception.
First, President Obama resignedly admitted that his long-planned free-trade agreement, the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), had no chance of passage in Congress this year and was politically dead for all practical purposes.
Second, in a speech which drew angry protesters in Athens, Greece, Obama said, “The current path of globalization demands a course correction; in the years and decades ahead, our countries have to make sure that the benefits of an integrated global economy are more broadly shared by more people and that the negative impacts are squarely addressed” — all but admitting that globalization had worked hard to enrich the few at the expense of the many.
Third, in an editorial in the influential Guardian newspaper in Britain, economist Thomas Piketty, whose book “Capital in the 21st Century” was a worldwide bestseller last year, admitted, “Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this.”
Piketty further went on to comment that “the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and [suffered from] the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote” — referring to those populist voters who vastly preferred the fiscal policies of Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders over those of elitist frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
But rather than killing globalization outright, both Piketty and Obama seem to think it can simply be reined in or tailored to better fit the needs of the people, rather than be done away with entirely.
“The main lesson for the world is clear: as a matter of urgency, globalization must be fundamentally reoriented. The main challenges of our times are the rise in inequality and global warming. We must therefore implement international treaties enabling us to respond to these challenges and to promote a model for fair and sustainable development,” intoned Piketty in his editorial.
Obama stated, “In our trading relationships, we have to make sure that trade works for us, and not against us,” implying that agreements like the TPP merely needed to be tweaked slightly to be brought in line with the wishes of the people, rather than scrapped entirely and recreated from scratch.
The problem is that the writers of these free-trade agreements and the globalists that desire them are not going to let go of their vision of enriching themselves via the work of millions of people. They will find ways to enable their imbalances and inequalities no matter how many pages their agreements have to number or how many secret amendments have to be appended to them. The real solution is that there needs to be an admission that the entire concept of globalization is dangerous and places too much power in the hands of too few individuals.
It’s true that the world is more connected than ever before and that dialogue is easier than it ever was via new technologies and new communication tools. But that doesn’t stop trade barriers, tariffs and rules from being erected that can enable equitable trading, fair manufacturing and high standards to exist instead of a free-for-all marketplace that encourages a race to the bottom.
In essence, instead of free-trade agreements in the future, there should be discussions of “unfree-trade agreements” — pacts that ensure trading happens equitably, with strong public oversight, public accountability and most importantly, public interest — or it shouldn’t happen at all.
If a few billionaires can’t make an extra million because labor costs in one country are too high or because safety standards are too tight, so be it. Trading agreements should be looked at from the perspective of the worker instead of the factory owner — or at least from the perspective of the nations which are supplying the labor, rather than that of the conglomerates that are trying to make an end-run around those nations’ laws.
It’s clear that the pendulum of equality is about to start swinging in the opposite direction. And those politicians who somehow think that globalization can simply be adjusted minutely to accommodate for this unexpected wave of populism are in for a rude awakening.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
