> Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital).
Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries. As someone who is from a poor and corrupt country, I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
Edit: Ironically your comment is also waaaay too black and white.
> I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
This is definitely true and Phil Knight of Nike fame even said that without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
> without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic here. But without Amazon many people in my country will be worse off, however bad the working conditions maybe.
Yes it is tongue-in-cheek. I know it's a good proposition for the poor people of that country. But it is pretty widely viewed as exploitative through a wider world lens.
I remember Planet Money doing a pretty good story on this where they spoke with sweatshop workers in Bangladesh.
Relative to the labor wage of employees in the US, they were earning absolute pennies.
Relative to the places they came from? They doubled their income and were functionally free from concerns about things like famine and infected drinkable water.
Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
(Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
Bangladesh is a fascinating case story. They had a few decades of solid growth largely due to the textile industries, yes.
They went from dirt poor to merely poor. That's to be celebrated, and I hope we see Bangladeshis continue making themselves richer through their own hard work.
> (Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
I assume by 'folks back home' you are referring to people who live in rich countries? Having people in Bangladesh and Vietnam become richer is definitely good from a moral point of view, but it has only second order effects on the 'folks back home'. To a first approximation, it doesn't matter economically how well off or poor foreigners are. As a second order effect, if an economy is booming next door (ie they are getting richer), some positive effects often spill over, and global security probably goes up, too.
> Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
I'm not sure what you mean by exploitation? In any case, labour and capital are working together, you need both to produce anything in a modern economy. In fact, you need labour, capital and land working together.
If you want to get worked up about anything, it's not labour vs capital. But it's labour+capital vs land. In recent decades in the US the share of GDP going to labour has dipped a bit, capital's share has stayed stable, and the share of land went up.
Many economic analyses mix up land into capital. But that's misleading at best. We can produce more capital to compete with the old capital. We can't make more Land. (Well, not until we are building space habitats.)
(By Land with a capital L, I'm including the oceans. The Netherlands (or even more Singapore) reclaiming big swaths of land just means they are converting ocean floor Land to dry Land.)
It's ironic that USA lost 60-some thousand troops in Vietnam trying to prevent a communist takeover, only for American companies just to enslave them all anyway. I wonder how different the dynamic with Vietnam would have turned out if it had been more of a Korea situation. USA certainly never enslaved South Korea.
Huh? What do you mean by 'enslave'? If you mean that people work for low wages in the export sector, well then I have news for you on South Korea.
The reason South Korea graduated to higher wages quicker than Vietnam seems to be doing, is partially because South Korea is more capitalist, so they see more economic growth quicker.
> Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries.
Globalization is about benefiting capital in rich countries, any benefits to people poor countries is an unintended side-effect.
> I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
It may seem that way if you restrict your view to say, China, but it's more complicated than that, and there's more to the world than the "developed world" than Asia.
For instance: IIRC, Africa has had problems with local producers getting run out of business by Chinese knock-offs (e.g. https://www.dw.com/en/how-nigeria-lost-its-textile-market-to...), without the "benefit" of foreign sweatshop employment you've seen in Asia.
My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
> China is now competing head-on not just against other advanced economies but the most vulnerable ones. In effect, it is blocking the ladder to prosperity for countries in the Global South.
> Indonesia lost 250,000 jobs in its backbone textile industry between 2022 and 2024 because of a deluge of Chinese imports, according to the Indonesia Fiber and Filament Yarn Producer Association — and another half-million may now be at risk....
> In Thailand, the Chinese export tsunami has precipitated a crisis among smaller firms making car parts, electrical equipment, and consumer goods, stoking fears of deindustrialization. Village-based cottage industries are particularly at risk; for example, makers of hand-painted ceramic “rooster” bowls have been idled en masse by Chinese fakes that sell for one fifth of the price.
> China’s exports to Southeast Asia are now larger than those to the US. Malaysia’s semiconductor industry, a key growth-engine, is feeling the pressure. Electronics manufacturers in the Philippines are struggling. Vietnam has erected tariff barriers to Chinese hot-rolled coil steel products....
> Yet China keeps piling on the trade pressure. Africa is the new hotspot for Chinese exports: In September, Chinese shipments to the continent surged 56% year-on-year. In the same month, shipments to Latin America were up 15.2%. Some of China’s exports to emerging economies, particularly in Asia, are being rerouted to the US to get around US tariffs, but they also compete with local manufacturers in those firms’ home markets, while displacing their overseas sales.
> My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
It's not like protectionism and the government directing economies hasn't been tried in Africa..
Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries. As someone who is from a poor and corrupt country, I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
Edit: Ironically your comment is also waaaay too black and white.