Divisions in the Core of Global Capitalism? Italian Labour and ‘Free Trade’

The global labour movement has been divided over ‘free trade’. Many unions in the Global North, especially in export-oriented sectors, supported such agreements to secure markets and jobs, while unions in the Global South opposed them having experienced job losses and deindustrialisation. In my new article, ‘Divisions in the Core of Global Capitalism? Italian Labour and “Free Trade”’, published in the journal New Political Economy, I demonstrate that a split has opened up in the core of global capitalism. Against the background of drastic deindustrialisation, Italian trade unions have moved to an explicit anti – ‘free trade’ position, while especially the export sector German and Scandinavian trade unions continue their support. 

 

Analyzing, Strategizing and Taking action: The European Summer University of Social Movements in Mönchengladbach.

From 17 to 21 August 2022, over 600 activists from more than 20 countries in Europe and beyond gathered in Mönchengladbach/Germany for the 2022 European Summer University of Social Movements, organized by Attac and other allied social movements. In dozens of Forums, workshops, excursions, exhibitions and film screenings participants analyzed the current crises in Europe and the wider world, strategized about how best to respond to these challenges and engaged in concrete actions of resistance culminating in a protest march in the coal mining area around Lützerath. In this blog post, I will provide some reflections on the summer university.   

Moving towards Trade Justice? Labour movements and ‘free trade’.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting global value chains and geo-political rivalry especially between China and the US, the global ‘free’ trade regime has come under increasing pressure. On 7 May 2021, trade union researchers, academics and activists came together for an online workshop co-organised by Oxford Brookes University and the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ), Nottingham University, to explore whether this could be the moment for labour movements from around the world moving towards an alternative trade regime, based on social justice. In this blog post, I will reflect on some of the key findings. 

 

Call for Papers - Trade unions and Free Trade in the post-pandemic environment: moving towards trade justice?

Free trade has been criticised for some time as being an obstacle to independent development of countries in the Global South supporting working people’s real needs. The assumed benefits of free trade for people in the Global North too have come increasingly under scrutiny. Does COVID-19, which has demonstrated the fragility of the global free trade regime, open up new space for labour movements in their struggles for an alternative regime organised around principles of trade justice?

 

A social dimension to ‘free trade’? TUC Strategies and the GATT Social Clause, 1973–1994.

The rise of ‘new generation’ trade agreements such as TTIP and CETA, the ongoing debates surrounding Brexit, and the Trump administration’s aggressive protectionism have seen the issue of trade move away from being merely the preserve of pro-liberalisation lawyers and economists towards a much more public debate on the social costs of free trade policies. Alongside this debate, trade unions and civil society organisations have taken to the streets to oppose free trade agreements in record numbers. Trade is most certainly now a mainstream issue. Nonetheless, such opposition has still failed to curb the overwhelmingly neoliberal tendencies of world trade in general. In this guest post, Andrew Waterman discusses efforts to include a social dimension in trade agreements.

Trump, the rise of China and labour: What future for ‘Free’ Trade Agreements?

What are the implications of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)? How does the rise of China affect global free trade? And perhaps even more importantly, what should labour’s position on free trade look like? In this blog post, I publish the interview, which I gave to Bruno Dobrusin from the Argentine Workers' Central Union (Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina, CTA) addressing these and related questions about the future of ‘free’ trade agreements.

Food Poverty in the UK and the possibilities of food sovereignty policies

The Food and Agriculture Organization (2003: 29), states that ‘food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs’. The British government currently utilises food security in departmental policy papers, emphasising the aim of improving trade relationships, in which food is considered a market good as part of neo-liberal frameworks such as the World Trade Organisation (McMichael 2003: 171-2). While popular assumptions relate lack of access to food to developing countries, food poverty is becoming more well-known in the UK due to the growth of food banks. Recent estimates state that 8.4 million of the UK population are undernourished (Taylor and Loopstra 2016: 1), forming the basis for many of the arguments concerning the necessity of change in UK policy (Taylor and Loopstra 2016: 1). In this guest post, Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu assesses the UK’s food system by looking at the central concepts of food security versus food sovereignty.

Feed the world: Can trade liberalisation help to achieve global food security?

Photo by Jason Taellious

Free trade’s expansion into the realm of food and agriculture has given residents of the Global North access to a greater range of food at lower costs than ever before. As with most commodities since free trade was implemented globally during the 1980s and 1990s, food has been globalised. However since the 2008 global financial crisis critiques of this prevailing economic system have become more prominent. The wisdom of free trade economics is being questioned at an unprecedented level, with many seeing it as increasingly evident that the people of the Global South are being exploited for the benefit of those in rich nations. With the financial crisis came a food price crisis, which led to the number of people not receiving adequate nutrition reaching a level not seen in decades, with one in seven people going hungry worldwide.

Paradoxically, more food is being produced than ever, and the burden of hunger is tragically placed in developing countries. In this guest post, Angus Macleod analyses whether this crisis, and general malnourishment in the developing world, can be considered a result of the trade liberalisation policies which dominate global economics, and if so, how viable food sovereignty, the main alternative to this system, can be.

The Future of UK-China Relations post-Brexit - China as a Hope Project

With Brexit on the horizon, the UK is currently in search for alternative trade agreements, not only with European countries, but also other economies around the world. The emerging market of China plays a key role in this strategy. In this blog post, I will assess the potential and implications of future UK – China relations.

Photo by Sergeant Paul Shaw LBIPP/MOD

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century

Despite the ongoing ramifications of the global economic crisis of 2007/2008, capitalism continues to reap super profits. In his fascinating book Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation and Capitalism’s Final Crisis (Monthly Review Press, 2016) John Smith unravels the underlying dynamics of global capitalism. By tracing the production of the T-shirt, the cup of coffee, and the iPhone, he demonstrates how these generate the transfer of enormous surplus value from countries in the Global South to transnational corporations in the North. In this blog post, I will outline several of the key contributions of this book and offer a number of critical reflections.  

Killing TTIP - The struggle against corporate power!

While Obama is visiting Europe to drum up support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the 13^th round of negotiations of the treaty is currently taking place in the US. As John Hilary, the Executive Director of War on Want and one of the key initiators of the Stop-TTIP campaign in Europe, declared, TTIP is not only important in itself covering the EU and US. It is also significant, because it is regarded as a blueprint for all future trade deals. In this blog post, I will report on the key themes of his public lecture at Nottingham University, delivered on 26 April.

Towards principles of an alternative fair trade regime

Multilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), praised as engines of development by their supporters, have experienced a revival recently in a number of multilateral negotiations including the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In this blog post, I will critically discuss the record of FTAs and suggest potential key principles of an alternative trade regime from a workers’ perspective, including one set of principles around national sovereignty and another against the increasing structural power of transnational capital. I will, thereby, draw on my freely downloadable paper ‘From ‘free trade’ to ‘fair trade’: proposals for joint labour demands towards an alternative trade regime’, published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Johannesburg/South Africa.

Food sovereignty and Fair Trade: a link between alternatives to the neo-liberal food regime.

The multiple global economic, financial, food and ecological crises are deepening. And yet, neo-liberal capitalism continues to reign supreme. Every crisis is responded to by further marketization and commodification. ‘Free’ trade is deepened in negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). In this post, Jacklyn Cock and I suggest that the links between the concepts of ‘food sovereignty’ and ‘fair trade’ could promote connections between labour and community struggles and foster labour solidarity at both the transnational and local levels. Both concepts present challenges to the neo-liberal food regime.

Challenging Corporate Capital: Creating an Alternative to Neo-Liberalism.

From 25 to 27 March 2015, the second meeting of the Futures Commission, hosted by the Chris Hani Institute, was held in Cape Town/South Africa. The Futures Commission had initially been set up in a first meeting in Johannesburg/South Africa in June 2013 as the result of an initiative by the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR) (see SIGTUR’s Futures Commission). The Futures Commission, consisting of left academics and trade union representatives from SIGTUR affiliates and supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, was entrusted with the task to develop alternatives to neo-liberalism. At its Congress in Perth/Australia in December 2013 (see SIGTUR’s tenth Congress), SIGTUR identified four key themes as common challenges for all SIGTUR affiliates: (1) the growing power of transnational corporations (TNCs) especially expressed in a new round of free trade negotiations such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement; (2) the loss of government revenue due to tax avoidance in tax havens; (3) the restructuring and privatisation pressures on the public sector; as well as (4) the problem of climate change and the related need for a just transition to a post-carbon based economy. At its meeting in Cape Town, the Futures Commission focused on proposals in all four key areas. In this blog post, I will report on these discussions.

Big business and US free trade policy: Corporations in Control!

Two far-reaching free trade agreements are currently being negotiated, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) (see The People against Capital: Stop-TTIP!). Nevertheless, while these negotiations take place in secrecy behind closed doors and outside democratic accountability, representatives of big corporations have close access to decision-makers. In this guest post, Marty Hart-Landsberg outlines the privileged influence big business enjoys on US trade policy.

The People against Capital: Stop-TTIP!

The conflict over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a struggle between different blocs, argued John Hilary, Executive Director of the NGO War on Want and Honorary Professor at Nottingham University, in a presentation at the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) on Monday, 24 November. This not, however, between Europe and the USA or Europe together with the USA against Asia, but between capital on the one hand, and labour, the environment and the people on the other. In this blog post, I will discuss key points of John Hilary’s presentation covering the contents of TTIP, its dangers as well as the mounting resistance against it.

Unravelling Capitalist Globalization

Despite the prolonged global economic crisis since 2007/2008, neo-liberal economic thought and practice continue to reign supreme. In his important book Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance and Alternatives (Monthly Review Press, 2013), Martin Hart-Landsberg makes a number of key interventions unravelling the myth of neo-liberalism as well as the dynamics underlying capitalist accumulation.

Trade Union Solidarity and Free Trade: The case of COSATU.

Do trade unions matter in the Twenty-First Century? How are they responding to ongoing processes of neoliberal restructuring? In particular, what obstacles do they face in developing transnational solidarity against the rise of free trade? What is clear is that national labour movements in different parts of the world have, at times, responded differently to the deepening of trade liberalisation in recent years. This is because the immediate impact they face differs depending on their place within the structure of the global economy. In his new academic article ‘The Congress of South African Trade Unions and Free Trade: Obstacles to Transnational Solidarity’, which is part of a special issue on Free Trade and Transnational Labour, Stephen Hurt explores these questions through a study of how the biggest trade union federation in South Africa – the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) – has reacted to both multilateral and bilateral trade liberalisation. 

Another trade policy is possible! The proposals by the Alternative Trade Mandate.

Trade policy has been one of the great battle grounds for progressive movements around the globe. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, as elegant in principle as it can be dangerous in practice, has underpinned the spread of global neo-liberal ideology over the last century. Free Trade is now established as an unquestionable ‘good’ in the world and any attempt to question the wisdom of ever more open borders and ever fewer barriers to the rapid movement of goods and capital is seen in mainstream circles as nothing short of heresy. The few informed voices (such as that of the inestimable Ha Joon Chang) that have been raised to question the idea that ever freer trade is the fast track route to success for developing countries have been simply ignored. In this guest post, Toby Quantrill discusses the Alternative Trade Mandate and its efforts of putting forward proposals for an alternative European trade policy to the neo-liberal ‘free trade’ model, which is currently also dominating the EU.

Uneven development, unequal exchange and free trade: what implications for labour?

The notion of uneven and combined development has attracted increased academic and activist attention. The concept of unequal exchange, in turn, has been established for some time. What has not been analysed is how these sets of capitalist dynamics intersect. In a new article in the journal Globalizations, entitled ‘Uneven and combined development and unequal exchange: the second wind of neoliberal ‘free trade’?’, Adam David Morton and I analyse the way in which current neoliberal ‘free trade’ policies are related to these fundamental capitalist dynamics, deepening further processes of uneven and combined development as well as unequal exchange. We also highlight the implications for labour as a result of the widening uneven and combined development of neoliberalism.