As soon as I can figure out how to upload the PDF, I will re-publish a short analysis and polemic I wrote in 1980 about the emergence of the Pacific Rim economy. I did this during a time of very intense political and labor organizing in Oregon, where I was going to graduate school and engaging in radical left politics during the late 1970s.
It’s going to go directly against the grain of the current “fair trade” movement by challenging its key precept that the current TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade agreement is really “NAFTA on Steroids.” Actually it’s the other way around: the East Asian economies were actually highly integrated under US-Japanese tutelage during the Cold War, and one of the first steps in this process was the Japanese establishment of a low-wage manufacturing base in South Korea where its more high-tech conglomerates could shift their labor-intensive production of textiles, electronics, garments, shoes and steel.
In effect, a Japanese-South Korean trade zone – developed with great prodding by the United States as a way to solidify its economic and military dominance in the region – was the first NAFTA. The model of US and Japanese companies shifting production around, first to South Korea and Taiwan, then to Southeast Asia and Mainland China, began long – way long – before NAFTA. And, in fact, NAFTA was created by the U.S., Canada and Mexico in large measure to create a kind of collective defense against East Asian production then flooding global markets. I hope this re-publication will stimulate discussion and debate about the politics of U.S. and global trade. I have a couple major journalism projects I’m working on (one out very shortly in The Nation) so not sure when I’ll get it out. Anybody who knows how to compress large PDFs and load them onto a WordPress site, shoot me an email.
