September 14, 2007
Moderation needed in political, economic globalization
Earlier this week, the U.S. automotive industry coped with a string of politically motivated bombings in our southern neighbor, as the Automotive News reports:
MEXICO CITY -- The head of Mexico’s auto suppliers association said today that 200 of his group’s 1,000 members have suspended production because of a lack of natural gas.
The attack on Monday, Sept. 10, by leftist rebels on crucial fuel pipelines also has caused six auto assembly plants here, including two owned by General Motors, to suspend production. Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and Volkswagen AG also have suspended production for the rest of the week.
The number of suppliers affected by the natural gas cutoff or by customers cutting production has doubled in the past two days. Delphi Corp. and Visteon Corp. are among suppliers that have shut down plants.
There have been no reports of parts deliveries being affected outside Mexico.
Ramon Suarez, president of the INA, Mexico’s national auto suppliers association, today urged the Mexican government and state energy monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, to improve the energy infrastructure “so that we don’t have to rely on just one pipeline for our supplies of natural gas.”
“It is a grave situation, both from the point of view of economic losses and the reputation of Mexico,”–The Automotive News
Needless to say, this situation put a major U.S. industry at risk. Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs have gone south of the border; and millions more have fled to other LCCs (low-cost countries). Some key portions of our manufacturing base are now located primarily in countries like Mexico and China, where they are hostage to potential political turmoil in these historically unstable countries.
The aforementioned incidents in Mexico demonstrated the inherent risk of overzealous globalization. Should we have trade with Mexico and China? Yes. Should American manufacturers have a presence in these countries? Yes. Should we relocate entire sectors of our manufacturing economy in these countries? No.
The chief fallacy of the common pro-globalization arguments is that it has to be either one way or the other…We must open the doors completely, or doom ourselves to the bogeyman of “isolationism.” Behind this argument is the premise that no middle ground---- no rational position in between the two extremes----is possible.
There is, in fact, a third choice: We can integrate our economies with countries like Mexico and China to a certain point----but stop short of shipping strategic functions overseas. This will allow us to maintain productive trading relationships without making the problems of foreign countries the problems of the United States.
Moderation is also called in the area of political and demographic integration. Advocates of open borders often declare that the only alternative to unrestricted immigration is a state of hostile xenophobia. Efforts to safeguard the integrity of the U.S. border are routinely disparaged as “fortress America”---a term which harkens back to the isolationism of the 1930s.
Once again, we need to find an appropriate middle ground. Some demographic exchange between bordering countries like the U.S. in Mexico is natural. But the transfer of 10~12 million Mexicans to the United States clearly exceeds the rational bounds of normal demographic exchange. We can be a good neighbor to Mexico without allowing a double-digit percentage of its population to just move in.
Earlier this month, one of the debates among the U.S. presidential candidates was hosted by the Spanish-language network Univision. The debate was translated from English to Spanish and vice versa. Two of the candidates, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson, conducted the entire debate in Spanish.
I am a consistent advocate of foreign language studies in the United States; I even wrote a book on the topic: Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One. Spanish is a major language of the Western Hemisphere. I wouldn’t go far to say that every American should speak fluent Spanish; but at least one half or a third of us should.
That having been said, when the Spanish language becomes a major factor in the U.S. presidential campaign, it is reasonable to ask the question: Has immigration from Mexico exceeded reasonable bounds? After all, the candidates did not see the need to debate in Russian, Thai, French, or Swahili. They chose Spanish because first-generation, Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico are now so numerous that they represent a monolithic voting bloc in the United States.
This situation represents a major imbalance. Immigration should be more or less evenly distributed from many countries: the objection of U.S. immigration laws is not simply to absorb a large part of the Mexican population.
All healthy relationships require healthy boundaries---including relationships between countries. The question is not “to globalize or not to globalize” but, “what degree of globalization is appropriate?” Recent events in Mexico and the United States suggest that U.S. policymakers are not asking this basic question.
