again, free trade is a misleading term; a more accurate one would be the regional and global integration of production and distribution, a far more serious business than trade - as the TCMD put it in its 1992 World Investment Report: regional production integration goes beyond trade integration and extends to the liberalization of barriers to cross-border flows of capital, technology, skills, and to some extent, people - more specifically, the policies that allow for such movements go much further in integrating national economies and regulatory systems than policies designed to support intra-regional trade, since adjusting to a regional production system implies harmonizing a wide range of fiscal, monetary, and industrial policies among member countries.
harmonizing means adapting to the needs of MNCs, and national economic policy making becomes a global contest for big capital's favors - big capital spent a lot of money on a PR campaign for NAFTA - Citibank and AIG (a huge, rapacious insurance company) offered citizens an 800 number for lobbying their representatives for the pact - the pitch was that it would create jobs; AIG said NAFTA was a gift to our children - Marx mocked his industrialists' free trade campaign, which touted cheaper bread but forgot to mention lower wages and higher profits, as the philanthropy of manufacturers - in pumping for NAFTA, Citibank and AIG, which are hot to enter restricted Mexican financial markets, were practicing the philanthropy of financiers.
The Philanthropy of Financiers: excerpt 9
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