by Michael Roberts
Today, US President Donald Trump delivered his keynote speech to
the meeting of the global elite, World Economic Forum at Davos,
Switzerland. It was eagerly awaited by the corporate chiefs, finance
and hi-tech social media moguls, as well as other government leaders.
Last year at Davos, the star of the show was Chinese President Xi who
told his glittering audience that China was ready to take over the
leadership in the fight for ‘globalisation’ and free trade as the US
under trump stepped back and went down the protectionist road.
So Xi, autocratic leader of a one party state directed and controlled
economy, became the darling of Davos. Would the Donald take the prize
this year. After a tumultuous and often debasing year in office, Trump
has managed to get through his Congress huge cuts in corporate and
personal taxation that will benefit the profits of US multinationals and
the incomes of top 1%. But he failed to reverse Obamacare, that
limited measure of subsidised private health insurance; he has yet to
build ‘the wall’ to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants; and he has very
little to stop Chinese manufacturing imports flooding into the US.
Sure, he took the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade
deal – a deal that ironically was designed to isolate China from trade
and investment in the region. And only last week he announced tariffs
on imported solar energy equipment from China. But that’s it. He wants
to renegotiate the terms of the longstanding North American Free Trade
Association (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. But little has happened.
In the meantime, TPP has been revived by the other participants, Canada
signed a free trade deal with the EU and Japan is looking to do one with
Europe too.
So it appears that globalisation (free trade and investment) is not
being blocked much by Trump’s America First policy so far.
Nevertheless, globalisation and world trade has slowed sharply since the
end of the Great Recession. Global trade growth in the era of
globalisation from the mid-1980s onwards grew faster than global GDP by
an average ratio of around 2 to 1. But since the Great Recession, it
has barely matched a low world GDP growth rate.
It’s the same story with global capital flows, a major feature of the globalisation era.
Overall flows (direct investment, portfolio investment and loans) have flattened as a share of global GDP since 2007.
The United Nations Investment Trends Monitor,
released Monday, showed a 16% decline in foreign direct investment
worldwide between 2016 and 2017. FDI (foreign direct investment) flows
dropped by more than a quarter in what the UN terms “developed
economies,” with the US and the UK responsible for a large portion of
that decline.
Cross-border mergers and acquisitions and “greenfield” projects —
businesses building factories and other facilities in foreign countries —
both suffered in 2017. The value of cross-border M&As declined by
23%, despite a 44% increase in value of cross-border M&As in
developing economies. Greenfield-project value declined 32% to $573
billion, the lowest point since 2003.
The potential end of globalisation and the rise of populists and
other nationalist leaders like Trump in many countries is really
worrying the global elite meeting in Davos. FT columnist Martin Wolf, who once wrote a book called Why Globalisation works
back in 2004 before the global financial crash, reversed his view back
in 2016. He now feared that globalisation would be reversed to
detriment of all. And just before Davos, he told his readers that
‘democracy’ itself was threatened by protectionism and autocratic
nationalist rulers, but admitting that globalisation itself failed to
sustain prosperity and improve equality. On the contrary, the wild
effusion of speculative capital eventually triggered the biggest
financial crash since 1929 and inequality of income and wealth in the
major economies had reached levels not seen in 150 years.
Just before Davos, Oxfam updated its estimate
of global wealth inequality and found Last year saw the biggest
increase in the number of billionaires in history, with one more
billionaire every two days. This huge increase could have ended global
extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all wealth created in the last
year went to the top 1%, and nothing went to the bottom 50%.
There are now 2,043 dollar billionaires worldwide. Nine out of 10 are
men. Billionaires also saw a huge increase in their wealth. This
increase was enough to end extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all
of the growth in global wealth in the last year went to the top 1%,
whereas the bottom 50% saw no increase at all. New data from Credit
Suisse means 42 people now own the same wealth as the bottom 3.7 billion
people.
Talk about the uneven and combined development of global capitalism!
There is currently huge optimism among the Davos elite that in 2018
world capitalism is finally recovering from the Great Recession of
2008-9 and ensuing Long Depression. For the first time since the early
2000s, all the major economies are growing simultaneously. Capitalism
has never been more globally synchronised. But that has another side.
Capitalism has never more prone to international simultaneous crises.
The risk remains that if the US turns down, then so will all the
rest. And that could well be triggered over the next year or so by the
rising cost of international debt as the US Fed and other central banks
carry out their planned interest rate hikes (in the graph – when the blue line of Fed policy rate rises above the black line of US treasury yields, a recession usually follows.
Davos is the debating hub of the leaders and supporters of global
capital and globalisation (free movement of multinational capital and
trade without national restrictions). Globalisation is part of the
neoliberal project to maximise profits, although this aim is cloaked in
the respectable mainstream economics view that it will bring growth and
incomes to all. The Davos elite see that this propaganda has been
exposed by the evidence of global poverty and inequality. But even
worse, the leader of the largest capitalist power stands for
protectionism and nationalism – at least in words.
Thus speaker after speaker, from Indian President Modi to French
President Macron, mouthed support for maintaining free trade, while
‘recognising’ the need to ‘do something’ about inequality (and climate
change – another Trump bugbear). “If we commit ourselves to make our current globalisation more fair.. we can converge and build a new globalisation.” Macron. Thus the theme of Davos 2018 was to stop ‘fragmentation’ and sustain ‘fair’ globalisation.
So what did ‘the Donald’ tell the assembled Davos elite? Well, he
wants to “put America first, but not America alone”. In other words, he
aims to put the US in ascendancy in trade, investment and military
power and for everybody else to get in line. That’s the classic
position of the leading imperialist power – so no change there.
The Trump administration aims to get a ‘better deal ‘ on trade with
Asia (China) and Europe. And also it aims to weaken the dollar so that
US export are more competitive. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
has been going round Davos saying that “a softer dollar will juice US economic growth… because “obviously a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities.”
That
did not go down well with ECB president Mario Draghi at his press
conference yesterday, who pointed out that there was an international
understanding that countries should “not target our exchange rates for competitive purposes”.
“We don’t even like to use the word ‘protectionism’ . . . We don’t use that word,” said Mnuchin. “This
is not about protectionism. This is about free and fair reciprocal
trade. Anybody who wants to do trade with us on reciprocal terms is
welcome to do so.” And in the same breath, Wilbur Ross, US trade
secretary, has been talking about closing down the World Trade
Organization and/or kicking China out. “It’s an old system, decades old. The world has changed, the economies have changed. The pecking order of countries has changed (ie meaning the US does not get its way any more – MR). Everything has changed. The WTO has not really modified its role. It needs to be updated, at best (ie the US needs to be in charge – MR).”
Protectionist trade policies and competitive devaluation are
nationalist medicines for economic weakness and domestic slump. But
they only work (even then for just a limited time) as long as nobody
reciprocates. In the Asian crisis of 1998, Malaysia did not obey the
IMF and opted for nationalist policies and it worked because all other
Asian economies did what they were told. But in the 1930s, when the US
imposed tariffs, other countries followed suit and so aggravated the
slump.
The point is that it is not
‘unfair competition’ in world trade that has caused the decimation of
US manufacturing jobs since the 1970 but the decision of US capital to
invest in technology to replace labour and to send their factories
and units abroad to use cheaper labour. Globalisation was the a
reaction of the global crisis in profitability in the 1970s (as the
previous wave of globalisation in the late 19th century was). It was part of the neoliberal agenda to drive up the rate of exploitation and thus profitability. But it did not last.
The global elite gathering in Davos fret that Trump and other
nationalists will spoil the party and even end democracy. But the
Donald emerged because of the failure of global capital, as represented
by Davos. The Donald’s appearance shows that, as trade and finance
stagnate, imperialist rivalry will grow. And it will be labour that will pay for this once again.
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