The coming Trade War...part 3

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THE COMING TRADE WAR, Part 3
Trade in the age of overcapacity
By Henry C K Liu

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GG08Dj01.html

Neo-liberals have created a false dichotomy between so-called command economies and market economies. The spurious distinction is propagated by ideologue free-traders in order to give market fundamentalism an aura of truth beyond reality.

Market fundamentalism is the belief that the optimum common interest is only achievable through a market equilibrium created by the effect of countless individual decisions of all market participants each seeking to maximize his own private gain, and that such market equilibrium should not be distorted by any collective measures in the name of the common good. It is summed up by Margaret Thatcher's infamous declaration that there is no such thing as society.

The fact is that in a world of sovereign states, all economies are command economies. The United States, the mecca of market fundamentalism, commands its alleged market economy in the name of national security. While the US tirelessly advocates free trade, foreign trade is a declared instrument of US foreign policy. President George W Bush declares that "open trade is a moral imperative" to spread democracy around the world. The White House Council of Economic Advisers is organizationally subservient to the National Security Council. National-security concerns dictate trade policies the US adopts for its economic relations with different foreign countries. World trade today is free only to the extent of being free to support US unilateralism. For the US imperium, the line between foreign policy and domestic policy is disappearing to make room for global policy. The sole superpower views the world as its oyster, and global trade is to replace foreign trade in a global economy the rules for which are set by a World Trade Organization dominated by the sole superpower.

Free trade and national security
US trade policy with regard to China, the world's fastest-growing and most populous economy, is a case in point.

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