全球化到底哪儿出错了？（英文）

There’s a broad sense that globalization is not working well today. Workers in developed countries complain that jobs are moving abroad and inequality is worsening; developing countries open up markets only to find themselves subject to the vagaries of international capital and businesses; and almost all national governments feel an erosion of the scope and potency of domestic policies. Nonetheless, very few could really put their fingers on what it is about globalization that has run amok. In a new paper, Harvard economist Dani Rodrik examines the role of trade, and in particular trade agreements, in this trend of retreat.

To the untrained eye, trade agreements bring about free trade. The traditional economic textbook contends that trade agreements make trade “freer” among nations by reducing barriers and preventing mutually harmful actions countries may take in their absence. And these, in turn, have the potential of reducing prices and increasing varieties of imported goods, and generating domestic employment. However, as Rodrik notes, that is not what recent trade agreements appear to be doing:

Economists share the blame for confusion about what these agreements actually do. As economic reasoning has it, when left to their own devices, countries may have the tendency to erect what is called “optimal tariff” in order to manipulate their terms of trade — the international prices they face — to their advantage. This outcome, however, would eventually leave all parties worse off, as they race to impose tariffs in the face of the cooperation breakdown. Thus a trade agreement that commits countries to free trade could improve overall welfare and keep domestic protectionists at bay. This and other lines of similar reasoning have become part of conventional wisdom among economists and have stood unchallenged for decades. But this, too, missed the mark, according to Rodrik:

So what do recent trade agreements do and what do they have to do with the broad based dissatisfaction with globalization? 

Instead of eliminating trade barriers such as import duties and quotas, contemporary trade agreements have become a lot more expansive in the list of issues they tackle. They commonly cover issues such as labor standards, patentrules, investor-state dispute settlement, and harmonization of standards that work to the benefit of corporate profits at the expense of a system for broader well-being. Not only do these issues go beyond what most models on free trade were set up to analyze; they may also occupy domains of public welfare where economists have chosen to remain mute.

Take regulatory harmonization for example. Economists contend that harmonizing regulations — that is, eliminating differences indomestic regulations between countries — could reduce transaction costs and facilitate trade across national borders. Whether it be labor standards, patentrules, or environmental regulations, harmonized rules can make it easier for business to produce and sell in foreign markets. While better labor and environmental standards may improve social welfare in host countries in theory, the particular way they were put forward reflect first and foremost the corporate interest behind these standards. And depending on national circumstances and consumer preferences, there may be good reasons regulations differ across borders. Trade agreements that aim to change the rules governing domestic economic life risk undermining the welfare of those whose interests the regulations were meant to serve in the first place.

Another aspect of recent trade agreements has been the so-called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedure, which gives a foreign corporation the right to sue a host country government in special arbitration tribunals. This issue came to public attention when the cigarette maker Philip Morris challenged (and lost to) the Australian government over the nation’s plain packaging laws, which prohibit cigarette companies from including branding on packaging. Inadequate legal protection and risk of appropriation may be a legitimate concern for foreign businesses, particularly in developing countries, but we can justifiably suspect that a large number of these cases to be about clearing the way for business expansion abroad, like the Philip Morris case.

The logical next question to ask is how these issues made their way into trade agreement design and negotiations to begin with. 

Here, Rodrik provides evidence that multinational corporations, which inserted themselves into the trade negotiation process, have packaged such factors as patent rules as trade issues in order to serve their special interests. Rather than enlarging the economic possibilities of countries involved, trade agreement negotiations of this type often incur large economic redistribution with minuscule overall gains. And oftentimes, it is the multinational corporations and financial institutions that stand to gain at the expense ofworkers and developing countries everywhere.

Rodrik argues that there are still legitimate issues that modern trade agreement negotiations should tackle, including the global competition to set proper corporate tax rates. However, the absence of groups representing these issues in the negotiation process have put them far down on the agenda.

A closer look at what modern trade agreements do and don’t do makes clear that they have over the years taken on a variety of issues that reach beyond the traditional theories of free trade, and in many cases, domains of national governance. Economists would do well to think twice about what interests they’re advancing before continuing to promote what looks like class warfare in the name of “free trade”.