- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/57182782
Carney told reporters on Friday that “the world has changed” in recent years, and the progress made with China sets Canada up “well for the new world order”.
Canada’s relationship with China, he added, had become “more predictable” than its relationship with the US under the Trump administration.
The US is not in the “best position in the world” in trade. Free trade deals, have devastated the middle class., spread misery abroad, and sold out our technical and developmental advantages. Millions, tens of millions of quality manufacturing jobs were sent to countries with lower labor and environmental standards in a race to the bottom.
As with all things in the US, the system is rigged worldwide for the super rich. It’s rigged against working people here, and other countries.
That the president cynically co-opted this issue to do an end run around the democrats to win doesn’t negate this union issue, that we should have tariffs on countries that undercut us on labor and environmental. We shouldn’t let them sell things here without tariffs that were made by people in se asia working 6-12s for starvation wages, no benefits, no protections, not even citizenship in the cities they work for masses that were forced from their smallholdings into the cities to work those factories. They are illegal in their own cities, can be arrested, beat up, put out of town on a moment’s notice by employers.
They made 6-12’s illegal but they still make them work it and only pay them for the allowed hours. Then they dump their toxins in the ditch…
All while US corporations just handed our technology to China, and build their factories for them, be they on the 99 year lease, any real conflict they could lose them overnight, giving china the ultimate veto on the US, no matter what they say.
Meanwhile the agents of so called free trade and globalization tell everyone they are doing them a favor utilizing them for slave labour and poisoning them so their leaders can get our tech and their factories built. That is true for their rich, and that’s it. Working people in China se asia, and in the US are screwed. It has never been “the best,” position in trade at all, for the vast majority of people.
‘Best position in the world’ for US corporate interests. The fact that the wealth accrued from that is not distributed equitbly in the US is more of an internal issue rather than one related to trade policy.
Neoliberalism is meant to work to work in favor of American companies. When you mention a laborer in SE Asia making a pittance in exchange for terrible working conditions and benefits, it is American companies that are saving on costs and those savings show up on their balance sheets.
The issue is that the average American sees none of that and at best gets lower prices. The rest goes into the pockets of a few.
This is a feature of unregulated capitalism in the age of globalisation. If a country tries to push back (generally through left leaning movements / revolutions), the US government steps in to protect US corporate interests by staging a coup and installing a puppet.
Sure but the ruling classes of those developing countries make out too it’s not just american companies. As I said China very conspicuously got industrialized at wall street’s expense so they could undercut union labor and environmental protections. They got all the technologist of the west, their factories built. They have their own billionaires now. So it’s not just a US rich problem although they lead it and perhaps authored this latest iteration of the class war. It’s a super rich problem. They all are the problem.
And as you were saying it is inevitable without counter balancing forces companies cannot help but destroy the conditions that made them successful in the first place. They organized and destroyed forces that held them in check, and soon will be destroyed by it one way and or another, as the political monster they created on the right escapes their control and turns on them. After the downturns start for the purpose of seizing their assets. In any case they will lose from lower economic conditions.
The ruling class in such countries are almost always hand selected to protect American interests in the region. They’re compensated under the table to sell out their countrymen.
I wouldn’t agree that it was at wall street’s expense. American companies went into China willingly and agreed to those terms, eager for potential cost savings in return. One of the most notorious examples is Zuckerberg going out of his way to learn Mandarin, looking for any advantage to get Meta into China. China has played its cards quite intelligently, utilizing the foundation of unchecked greed in American corporate practice to build itself to its current position while the US government either fell asleep at the wheel or erroneously assumed that China would eventually assume the role of US vassal, like South Korea or Japan, as it became prosperous.
I agree that unchecked capitalism creates circumstances where the strengths of the free market gets subverted by monopolization and regulatory capture.