[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11338-11340]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



          THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION--THE END OF GEOGRAPHY?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sweeney). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Metcalf) 
is recognized until midnight.
  Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, during 1969, C. P. Kendleberger wrote that 
the Nation's State is just about through as an economic unit. He added 
that the U.S. Congress and right-wing-know-nothings in all countries 
were unaware of this. He added the world is too small. Two hundred 
thousand ton tank and ore carriers and air buses and the like will not 
permit sovereign independence of the Nation's state in economic 
affairs.
  Before that, Emile Durkheim stated, ``The corporations are to become 
the elementary divisions of the state, the fundamental political 
unit.'' Now I am going to repeat that. ``The corporations are to become 
the elementary division of the state, the fundamental political unit. 
They will efface the distinction between public and private, dissect 
the democratic citizenry into discrete functional groupings which are 
no longer capable of joint political action''.
  Durkheim went so far as to proclaim that, ``Through corporatisms' 
scientific rationale, it will achieve its rightful standing as the 
creator of collective reality.''
  There is little question that part of these two statements are 
accurate. America has seen its national sovereignty slowly diffused 
over a growing number of international governing organizations.
  The WTO is just the latest in a long line of such developments that 
began right after World War II. But as the protest in Seattle against 
the WTO ministerial meeting made clear, the democratic citizenry seemed 
well prepared for joint action. Though it has been pointed out that 
many, if not the majority of protesters, did not know what the WTO was, 
and much of the protest itself entirely missed the mark

[[Page 11339]]

regarding WTO culpability, in many areas proclaimed jurisdiction, 
responsibility, this remains but a question of education. It is the 
responsibility of the citizens' Representatives to begin that education 
process.
  The former head of the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice 
Department was Thurman Arnold from 1938 to 1943. We may not entirely 
agree with him when he stated that the United States had, I quote, 
``developed two coordinate governing classes. One is called business, 
building cities, manufacturing and distributing goods, and holding 
complete and autocratic power over the livelihood of millions.''

                              {time}  2330

  The other called government, concerned with preaching and 
exemplification of spiritual ideas, but so caught up in a mass of 
theory that when it wished to move in a practical world, it had to do 
so by means of a sub-rosa political machine. But surely the advocates 
of corporate governance today, housed quietly and efficiently within 
the corridors of power at the WTO, the OECD, IMF, and the World Bank, 
clearly believe. They really believe. Corporatism as ideology, and it 
is an ideology; as John Ralston Saul referred recently to it as a 
hijacking of first our terms, such as individualism, and then a 
hijacking of western civilization, the result being the portrait of a 
society addicted to ideologies, a civilization tightly held at this 
moment in the embrace of a dominant ideology: corporatism.
  As we find our citizenry affected by this ideology and its 
consequences, consumerism, the overall effects on the individual are 
passivity and conformity in those areas that matter and nonconformity 
in those which do not. We do know more than ever before just how we got 
here. The WTO is a creature of the General Agreement on Tariffs and 
Trade, that's GATT, which began in 1948 its quest for a global regime 
of economic interdependence. But by 1972, some Members of Congress saw 
the handwriting on the wall, and it was a forgery.
  Senator Long, while chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, made 
these comments to Dr. Henry Kissinger regarding the completion and 
prepared signing of the Kennedy round of the GATT accords, and I quote: 
``If we trade away American jobs and farmers' incomes for some vague 
concept of a new international order, the American people will demand 
from their elected representatives a new order of their own which puts 
their jobs, their security and their incomes above the priority of 
those who dealt them a bad deal.''
  But we know that few listened. And 20 years later the former chairman 
of the International Trade Commission argued that it was the Kennedy 
round that began the slow decline in America's living standards. Citing 
statistics in his point regarding the loss of manufacturing jobs and 
the like, he concluded with what must be seen as a warning, and I 
quote: ``The Uruguay Round and the promise of the North American Free 
Trade Agreement all may mesmerize and motivate Washington policymakers, 
but in the American heartland those initiatives translate into further 
efforts to promote international order at the expense of existing 
American jobs.''
  We are still not listening. Certainly, ideologists of corporatism 
cannot hear us. They, in fact, are pressing the same ideological 
stratagem in the journals that matter, like Foreign Affairs, and the 
books coming out of the elite think-tanks and nongovernmental 
organizations. One such author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, proclaimed her 
rather self-important opinion that State sovereignty was little more 
than a status symbol and something to be attained now through 
transgovernmental participation. That would be presumably achieved 
through the WTO, for instance?
  Stephan Krasner, in a volume, International Rules, goes into more 
detail by explaining global regimes as functional attributes of world 
order, that is, environmental regimes, financial regimes and, of 
course, trade regimes. In a world of sovereign states, the basic 
function of regimes is to coordinate state behavior to achieve desired 
outcomes in particular issue areas. If, as many have argued, there is a 
general movement toward a world of complex interdependence, then the 
number of areas in which regimes can matter is growing.
  But we are not here speaking of changes within an existing regime, 
thereby elected representatives of free people make adjustments to new 
technologies, new ideas and further the betterment of their people. The 
first duty of elected representatives is to look out for their 
constituency. The WTO is not changes within the existing regime but an 
entirely new regime. It has assumed an unprecedented degree of American 
sovereignty over the economic regime of the Nation and the world.
  Then who are the sovereigns? Is it the people, the nation, in nation 
state? I do not believe so. I would argue that who governs, rules. Who 
rules is sovereign. And the people of America and their elected 
representatives do not rule nor govern at the WTO but corporate 
diplomats, a word decidedly oxymoronic.
  Who are these new sovereigns? Maybe we can get a clearer picture by 
looking at what WTO is in place to accomplish. I took interest in an 
article in Foreign Affairs, ``A New Trade Order,'' volume 72, number 
one, by Cowhey and Aronson. Foreign investment flows are only about 10 
percent the size of the world trade flows each year, but intrafirm 
trade, for example sales by Ford Europe to Ford USA, now accounts for 
up to an astonishing 40 percent of all U.S. trade.
  This complex interdependence we hear of every day inside the Beltway 
is nothing short of miraculous, according to the policymakers who are 
mesmerized by all this. But, clearly, the interdependence is less 
between the people of the nation states than between the corporations 
of the corporate states.
  Richard O'Brien in his book entitled ``Global Financial Integration: 
The End of Geography,'' states the case this way: ``The firm is far 
less wedded to the idea of geography. Ownership is more and more 
international and global, divorced from national definitions. If one 
marketplace can no longer provide a service or an attractive location 
to carry out transactions, then the firm will actively seek another 
home. At the level of the firm, therefore, there are plenty of choice 
of geography.''
  O'Brien seems unduly excited when he adds, ``The glorious end of 
geography prospect for the close of this century is the emergence of a 
seamless global financial market. Barriers will be gone, services will 
be global, the world economy will benefit, and so too, presumably, the 
consumer.''
  Presumably? Counter to this ideological slant, and it is ideological, 
O'Brien notes the fact that ``governments are the very embodiment of 
geography, representing the nation state. The end of geography is, in 
many respects, all about the end or diminution of sovereignty.''
  In a rare find, a French author published a book titled The End of 
Democracy. Jean-Marie Guehenno has served in a number of posts for the 
French Government, including as their ambassador to the European Union. 
He suggests this period we live in is an imperial age. And to quote, 
``The imperial age is an age of diffuse and continuous violence. There 
will no longer be any territory to defend, but only older operating 
methods to protect. And this abstract security is infinitely more 
difficult to ensure than that of a world in which geography commanded 
history. Neither the rivers nor oceans protect the delicate mechanisms 
of the imperial age from a menace as multi-form as the empire itself.''
  The empire itself. Whose empire? In whose interests?

                              {time}  2340

  Political analyst Craig B. Hulet, in his book entitled ``Global 
Triage: Imperium in Imperio,'' refers to the new global regime as 
imperium in imperio, or power within a power, a state within a state.
  His theory proposes that these new sovereigns are nothing short of 
this:

[[Page 11340]]

``they represent the power not of the natural persons which make up the 
nations' peoples nor of their elected representatives, but the power of 
the legal paper persons recognized in law, the corporations themselves 
then are the new sovereigns. And in their efforts to be treated in law 
as equal as to the citizens of each separate state, they call this 
National Treatment, they would travel the sea and wherever they land 
ashore, they would be citizens here and there. Not even the Privateers 
of old would have dared impose this will upon the nation-states.''
  Can we claim to know today what this rapid progress of global 
transformation will portend for democracy here at home? We understand 
the great benefits of past progress; we are not Luddites here. We know 
what refrigeration can do to a child in a poor country, what clean 
water means to everyone everywhere, what free communication has already 
achieved. But are we going to unwittingly sacrifice our sovereignty on 
the altar of this new God, progress? Is it progress if a cannibal uses 
a knife and fork?
  Can we claim to know today what this rapid progress of global 
transformation will portend for national sovereignty here at home? We 
protect our way of life, our children's futures, our workers' jobs, our 
security at home by measures often not unlike our airports are 
protected from pistols on planes, but self-interested ideologies, 
private greed and private power? Bad ideas escape our mental detectors.
  We seem to be radically short of leadership where this act of 
participation in the process of diffusing America's power over to and 
into the private global monopoly capitalist regime, today pursued 
without questioning its basis at all.
  An empire represented by not just the WTO but clearly this new regime 
is the core ideological success for corporativism.
  The only step remaining, according to Harvard Professor Paul Krugman, 
is the finalization of a completed Multilateral Agreement on 
Investment, which failed at OECD. According to OECD, the agreement's 
actual success may come through not a treaty this time but arrangements 
within corporate governments itself quietly being hashed out at the IMF 
and the World Bank as well as OECD. We are not yet the united 
corporations of America.
  The WTO needs to be scrutinized carefully, debated, hearings and 
public participation where possible. If there is any issue upon which 
Congress must hold extensive and detailed public hearings, this is it. 
Yet few are planned that I know of.
  We can, of course, as author Christopher Lasch notes, peer inward at 
ourselves as well, when he argued, the history of the 20th century 
suggests that totalitarian regimes are highly unstable, evolving toward 
some type of bureaucracy that neither fits the classic fascism nor the 
capitalist model. None of this means that the future will be safe to 
democracy, only that the threat of democracy comes less from 
totalitarian or elected movements abroad than from the erosion of its 
psychological, cultural, and spiritual foundations from within.
  Are we not witness to, though, the growth of global bureaucracy being 
created not out of totalitarian or collective movements but from 
autocratic corporations which hold so many lives in the balance? And 
where shall we redress our grievances when the regime completes its 
global transformation, when the people of each nation and their state 
find that they can no longer identify their rulers, their true rulers, 
when it is no longer their state which rules?
  The most recent U.N. Development Report documents how globalization 
has increased inequality between and within nations while bringing them 
together as never before.
  Some are referring to this globalization's dark side like Jay Mazur 
recently in Foreign Affairs.
  ``A world in which the assets of the 200 richest people are greater 
than the combined income of more than 2 billion people at the other end 
of the economic ladder should give everyone pause. Such islands of 
concentrated wealth in the sea of misery have historically been a 
prelude to upheaval. The vast majority of trade and investment takes 
place between industrial nations dominated by global corporations that 
control one-third of the world's exports.''
  With further mergers and acquisitions in the future, with no end in 
sight, those of us that are awake must speak up now.
  Or is it that we just cannot see at all, believing in our current 
speculative bubble which nobody credible believes can be sustained much 
longer. We miss the growing anger, fear, and frustration of our people. 
Believing in the myths our policy priests pass on, we missed the 
dissatisfaction of our workers, believing in the God ``progress'' we 
have lost our vision.
  Another warning, this time from Ethan Kapstein in his article 
``Workers on the World Economy'' (Foreign Affairs: Vol. 75, No. 3):
  ``While the world stands at a critical time in post-war history, it 
has a group of leaders who appear unwilling, like their predecessors in 
the 1930s, to provide international leadership to meet economic 
dislocations. Worse, many of them and their economic advisors do not 
seem to recognize the profound troubles affecting their associates. 
Like the German elite in Weimar, they dismiss mounting worker 
satisfaction, fringe political movements, and plight of the unemployed 
and working poor as marginal concerns compared with the unquestioned 
importance of a sound currency and balanced budget. Leaders need to 
recognize the policy failures of the last 20 years and respond 
accordingly. If they do not, there are others waiting in the wings who 
will, perhaps on less pleasant terms.''
  We ought to be looking very closely at where the new sovereigns 
intend to take us. We need to discuss the end they have in sight. It is 
our responsibility and our duty.
  Most everyone today agrees that socialism is not a threat. Many 
people feel communism, even in China, is not a threat. Indeed, there 
are few real security threats to America that could compare to even our 
recent past.
  Be that as it may, when we speak of global market economy free 
enterprise, we massage the terms to merge with manage the competition 
and planning authorities, all the while suggesting we have met the 
``hidden hand'' and it is good.
  We need to also recall what Adam Smith said but is rarely quoted. 
``Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit but constant and 
uniform combination not to raise the wages of labor above their actual 
rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action 
and a sort of reproach for a master among his neighbors and questions. 
We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination because it is usual and, 
one may say, the natural state of things. Masters, too, sometimes enter 
into particular combinations to sink wages of labor even below this 
rate. They are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy 
till the moment of execution.''
  And now precisely, whose responsibility is it to keep an eye on the 
masters?
  I urge my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, left and right on 
the political spectrum, to boldly restore the oversight role of 
Congress in one stroke and join my colleagues and I in supporting H.J. 
Res. 90 in restoring the sovereignty of these United States.

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