Trade and Terrorism: What's the Link?

 
The US Congress is on the verge of passing trade promotion legislation that presents free and open markets and increased trade as urgent measures to defeat terrorism. Caught up in the pressures of the post 9/11 world, critics accuse the proponents of the trade bill of wrapping free trade in the flag and avoiding the necessary discussions and safeguards to our own and other economies. In fact, the rush to speed through Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) runs the risk of furthering the process of polarizing the trade debate; not only within the United States, but overseas as well. A spirit of "whoever is not with us is against us" applied to trade liberalization could have serious consequences in Latin America, where public opinion is critical of the current military focus of US anti-terrorism policy.

For years, but particularly since the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, free trade has been idolized and demonized by one group or another. Those who seek the middle ground are increasingly caught up in partisan verbiage. In the current climate, one more layer has been added to an already impressive stack of rhetoric. Proponents of trade as a tool for development-including such UN agencies as UNCTAD and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), as well as the mainstream trade union and environmental organizations-feel displaced as the debate moves to the extremes. At the same time, many people throughout the world are still not convinced that trade is a positive force in their nations' development. Public opinion is largely ignored by the proponents of TPA.

A recently released study by the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms the findings of previous opinion polls on the question of public concern over trade liberalization. The September 2001 study, by Dani Rodrik and Maria Mayda, asks the question, "Why Are Some People (and Countries) More Protectionist than Others?" Basing their research on a survey of 28,000 people around the world, the authors find that "non-economic determinants, in the form of values, identities, and attachments, play an important role in explaining the variation in preferences over trade." Although there is something for everyone in this data, it documents the importance of the social dimension as a factor in decisions concerning trade. Clearly, free trade is not viewed everywhere as a positive social force.

Free trade as an answer to the conditions that spawn terrorism will not be an easy sell outside more educated and affluent political society. As pro-trade New York Times Foreign Editor Thomas Friedman argued in a recent op-ed piece, "we need to understand that so many of these angry people are living in failed states with rotten, repressive regimes tacitly supported by the U.S." So far, the equity gap is a question that free trade has not been able to bridge.

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8461
New York Times, October 19, 2001, www.nytimes.com
"The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000 - Twenty Years of Diminished Progress," www.cnpr.net