When Band-Aids No Longer Work

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Related Programs:
American Strategy Program, Smart Globalization Initiative

On August 14, the New America Foundation hosted Pat Choate, Director of the Manufacturing Policy Project, to discuss his new book, Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America, a tell-all look at the dangers that unfettered globalization poses to America’s security and the American middle class.

Choate began by detailing a few of the threats the United States faces from unfettered international trade. He stated that we continue to import defective and often dangerous consumer goods from nations with little capacity to enforce safety standards while slashing government funding for safety inspections. In fact, the U.S. inspects less than 1% of the goods coming into its ports compared with more cautious nations such as Japan, which inspects 15%.

The United States has also permitted the outsourcing of vital defense research and manufacturing capabilities to foreign nations. Due to the increasingly popular practice of government private sector contracting, of the almost 100 components needed for the assembly of a single bullet, 30 such parts are manufactured overseas, often in nations such as China which may be strategically hostile to United States’ interests. Even sensitive military research is now being outsourced to foreign nations, while American tax and labor policies have done nothing to stop this trend.

 Choate argued that if America is to regain its security and prosperity in a globalized world, it needs to reengage its government to control and channel the dangers international trade brings. In addition to wide ranging ethics reforms and a renegotiation of its tax policies vis-à-vis nations that utilize the VAT, the United States needs to substantially reform the workings of the World Trade Organization. These reforms include movement toward proportional voting power based on economic weight, and increased transparency in the arbitration process.

-Ian McAllister, Research Intern for the American Strategy Program

Participants

• Pat Choate
  Author, Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America
  
• Steve Clemons
  Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
  Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com