Well, NAFTA and CAFTA have really mucked things up for people. In Mexico, our “trade” has led to people losing their livelihoods (such as dairys, farms, etc.) because of our subversion of trade. The same people who used to make a halfway decent living selling milk now are forced to migrate to the cities and work in the maliquadoras for a dollar a day.

In China, the industrialization caused by all of the increased manufacturing has led to the pollution of the land and water of many small villages, which were previously self-substaining. Now those people must work, sometimes as actual slaves (meaning, get paid 20 cents an hour but have to pay $70 a month for lodging and work 16 hour days seven days a week) in these factories instead of having autonomy. What really disturbs me are all of the children being exploited. I also dislike companies like Walmart and Coca Cola and their union busting. In Columbia, it is lethal.

Walmarts “GNP” qualifies it as the 20th largest “country”, economically speaking. That is too much power for an entity that has no constitution and only looks at the bottom line. There are many others…Exxon, etc.

I agree that the sweatshops should be replaced with fair jobs…if the jobs have to leave at all. For example, the standard of living in India is increasing, due to the tech jobs we have sent over there. However, I’m not thrilled about the fact that my kid has a passion for computer programming and he may not be able to find a job here. What sense does it make for any country to export jobs? It doesn’t, unless one is a CEO responsible only for $$$$.

I should take some pics of a neighborhood near where I live. The poverty is approaching third world levels. Falling down houses, no utilities, people shooting possums to eat. There are people here who literally, no joke, eat roadkill. It is bad. It wasn’t this bad before Walmart came. Walmart caused us to lose our tourism base (the quaint downtown is gone) as well as better-paying jobs. I am sickened by what we are doing to ourselves and others by having gone “global”.

Anyway, I guess that is the end of my rant! Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

Great idea, Deborah! I’ll have to find out about the church council. Perhaps they have people who know a bit more about business. We need something bigger than a bandaid.

When it comes to American abuse of third world countries, one big problem is that the US stops other countries from subsidising their industries (in the interests of free trade) and then those industries are (coincidentally) unable to compete with American-made products (which are subsidised). Buying American only helps international poverty if you either only *sell* American as well, or stop subsidising your farmers etc.

Otherwise you’d have a situation in which money flows *into* but not *out of* America, thereby screwing over the rest of the world. Remember that people work in sweatshops because they don’t have a better alternative. Simply getting rid of the sweatshops would leave them with no job at all. The whole point of fair trade is that when money flows out of America, it should at least be in fair quantities - ie. replacing sweatshops with fair jobs.

Then again if people in *every* country were to boycott foreign goods, supporting fair, well-paid, local workers, then that might also work.