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STAR-LEDGER
June 3, 2005
John Farmer

A 'no' to the new world order

The rejection of the European constitution by French and Dutch voters was the revolt of ordinary people against the excesses and uncertainties of globalization.

For most people, globalization, the economic driving force of the new century, is an abstraction -- a fancy, two-bit term for something they little understand. They feel its effects, however, in terms of lost jobs, the flood of immigrants and the threat to national identity posed by open borders, the diminished power of organized labor and -- what they fear most -- the predatory capitalism of American-style multinational corporations.

Each of these elements, in varying degrees, can be found in the decisive votes by which France and the Netherlands turned thumbs down on the European constitution. And, to a small but expanding degree, they can be found here, too.

The American complaint against the exporting of jobs to cheap labor markets like China and India is mild compared with the concern all across Western Europe, where unemployment ranges from 9 to 12 percent, but especially in France. The specter for the French was the symbolic "Polish plumber," the worker now free to move into Western Europe and compete for French jobs by accepting lower pay. (Sound familiar?)

Immigration is another irritant associated with worldwide free- market economics. It takes the form in Europe of an open border policy that has generated unwelcome immigration, especially Muslim immigration, an indigestible lump in the body politic of Christian Western Europe. The Times of London, calling attention to the murder of a Dutch politician by an Islamic extremist, said the Netherlands "is resentful of its million- strong Muslim minority and its intolerance, hostility to women's rights and refusal to integrate."

Here in the United States, Latino illegal immigration, mainly from Mexico, is the irritant. Volunteer groups, looking mighty like vigilantes, patrol the Arizona-Mexico border on the lookout for illegals. And the mayor of Fresno, Calif., has called for a moratorium on legal immigration until some coherent policy on newcomers can be crafted.

America has not encountered the unemployment plaguing Western Europe, not yet anyway. But there's fear of that prospect and reason to believe we're skirting the edge. Unemployment claims last week jumped to 250,000. And, oddly enough, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has just announced its "strong opposition" to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Why? Because the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Hispanic caucus supported, "has widened the gap between rich and poor," it concluded.

Here in the United States, it said, 47 percent of those receiving benefits for having lost jobs to NAFTA were Latino. And in Mexico, 1.3 million small farmers were forced off the land "because they were unable to compete with large multinational producers." It is precisely those unemployed farm workers, the caucus said, who "have become the undocumented immigrants of today."

Globalization is not reversible. It is the natural byproduct of the computer-driven information revolution that in turn promoted cooperation and consolidation in every major industry and ultimately the internationalization of those corporate giants. It's an American economic concoction, but with the collapse of communism, it was the only economic model that seemed to work.

But if globalization can't be reversed, it can be seriously slowed -- and will be if its corporate leaders, who increasingly dominate American government, don't show a more human face.

To flourish, globalization's giant corporations need a united Europe -- with one bureaucracy, one set of accommodating business regulations and a common currency. It can't survive on cheap Chinese labor alone. But if the polls have it right, the British, Swedes and Danes, like the Dutch and French -- the people, if not their political elites -- want no truck with a European constitution that threatens more dictation from the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They know it's the price for playing in the globalization game, but they're no longer sure they want to pay it.

Already, there are signs that some in Western Europe are having second thoughts about their new common currency, the euro.

"In exchange for giving up the basic tenet of sovereignty -- the right to mint a currency and thereby manage the national economy -- the EU promised economic prosperity and full employment," economist Anatole Kaletsy wrote recently in the Times of London. "Instead, the single currency has condemned the eurozone to stagnation and mass unemployment."

It would behoove the giants of our globalized world to consider the social consequences of what they do. There's backlash building if they don't.

John Farmer is The Star-Ledger's national political correspondent. He may be reached at jfarmer@starled ger.com.