A growing number of American economists are raising concerns about the American economy and the apparent consequences of America’s having adopted an economic policy featuring what passes as “free-trade,” the off-shoring of our productive resources, and so-called globalization, but few seem to be listening. Read Ralph Gomory, Paul Krugman, Henry C K Liu, and many others to see powerful critiques of globalization. Some of these critiques are suitable for popular consumption, but many are written in a language of economics that seem suited for only trained economists. And although these critiques are powerful, none gets to the absolute bottom of things. Current American economic policies are promoted under the guise of trade, and no one seems to have seen its inherent contradiction.
Ask any child what trade means, and you’ll be told that trade is giving someone something he wants and getting back something you want. Trade involves giving a thing to another in return for another thing for him. But off-shoring doesn’t work that way; it is not trade.
When a nation off-shores its productive capacity, it produces less and less. The products produced by companies engaged in off-shoring produce nothing in their home countries. The production is done in foreign countries. When carried to its logical conclusion, any nation that promotes off-shoring will sooner or later have no products to trade. The only thing that makes such activities seem like trade is the transfer of capital in the form of fiat money. But fiat money is not a tradable product. As Hugo Salinas Price has pointed out, “Today, not a single currency in the world has a valuable content; all of the one hundred and eighty or so currencies in the world have absolutely no intrinsic value at all.”
Now the American dollar is rapidly losing it purchasing power; the value of the dollar is dropping precipitously. The only thing that continues to prop its value up is the fact that since 1973, the US dollar, a fiat currency since 1971, serves as the primary reserve currency for international trade because oil continues to be denominated in fiat dollars. As long as that continues, the American dollar has real value, for while not backed by any commodity such as gold or silver, it is, in a sense, backed by oil. But the oil that backs the dollar is not America’s oil. It is oil owned by foreign nations, many of whom have good reason to dislike the United States.
But this situation may be nearing its end. Within the last few days, Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signaling that the oil-rich kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg. Kuwait became the first oil rich state to break its dollar peg in May. Oil producing countries have reduced their exposure to the dollar to the lowest level in two years and shifted oil income into euros, yen and sterling, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements. Russia and the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cut their dollar holdings in the second quarter of this year. Qatar and Iran also recently cut their dollar holdings.
So consider this scenario: The United States trades fiat money, dollars with no intrinsic value, for products made overseas, but manufactures fewer and fewer products for foreigners to buy. When it gets to the point that they can no longer even buy oil with the dollars they hold, what will they be able to buy with them? The only answer is America itself; they will buy American assets—American companies, American real-estate, and America’s infrastructure. It’s already beginning to happen.
A company in United Arab Emirates recently tried to purchase the company that controls our ports. Network equipment maker 3Com is giving up its independence in a $2.2 billion buyout by Bain Capital Partners, a Chinese company. In June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years. The tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company — which also owns a bridge in Alabama. Chicago sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion to Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain. Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49 percent of the state’s two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike.
Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease. The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995. Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease — for $207.5 million, a loss of $77.5 million. Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House’s Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs. Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease — for which Indiana got $3.8 billion. Taxpayer rip-off? Much more: the giving away of America by America’s business and political leadership.
Globalization and off-shoring under the guise of “free-trade” is not trade at all. It involves no swap; it is a complete misuse of the language; it involves an oxymoron. There is no such thing as trade that does not involve a swap. As America gets deeper and deeper in debt to foreign countries, as it continues to give fiat currency that is continually losing its value for imported products, America has hung a huge for-sale sign on itself—and our creditors are buying.
We Americans strange. Although we want immigrants to learn English, America’s official language, we may all soon have to learn Chinese and, perhaps, French, Spanish, and even Arabic.
