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Is Free Trade "Free?" Is It Even "Trade?" Oppression And Consent In Hemispheric Trade Agreements, Frank J. Garcia
Is Free Trade "Free?" Is It Even "Trade?" Oppression And Consent In Hemispheric Trade Agreements, Frank J. Garcia
Frank J. Garcia
In order for free trade as a policy to deliver fully on its social promise, it must be both “free” and “trade.” In fact, it must be free, in the sense of voluntary, to be trade at all. In other words, for normative and practical reasons, free trade requires that global economic relations be structured through agreements which reflect the consent of those subject to them. The neoliberal trading system today only imperfectly lives up to this obligation. In this essay, I will examine the role of consent in trade agreements, drawing on examples from CAFTA as representative of important …
The Moral Hazard Problem In Global Economic Regulation, Frank J. Garcia
The Moral Hazard Problem In Global Economic Regulation, Frank J. Garcia
Frank J. Garcia
Global regulation of international business transactions presents a particular form of the moral hazard problem. Global firms use economic and political power to manipulate state and state-controlled multilateral regulation to preserve their opportunity to externalize the social costs of global economic activity with impunity. Unless other actors can effectively counter this at the national and global regulatory levels, globalization re-creates the conditions for under-regulated or “robber baron” capitalism at the global level. This model of economic activity has been rejected at the national level by the same modern democratic capitalist states which currently dominate globalization, creating a crisis of legitimacy …