Globalization

“ It appears to me, that this much has now been palpably demonstrated, namely, that an advanced and complicated social condition like this in which we live can only be maintained by establishing mutual relationships between the most remote nations; and that the limitation of commerce would, like the sapping of a main pillar, inevitably occasion the fall of the whole edifice; and also that commerce is so essentially beneficial and in accordance with man’s nature, that the well-being of each nation is an advantage to all the nations that stand in connection with it. ”

“ A very few great empires and nations today control the whole available supplies of many of the foods, fabrics, and metals, the shipping and finance, that are essential to the livelihood and progress of every civilized people. Are Britain, America, France, and Japan—and especially the two greatest of these powers—going to absorb or monopolize for their exclusive purposes of trade or consumption these supplies which every country needs, or are they going to let the rest of the world have fair access to them? ”

“ Vous voyez, Monsieur le Ministre, que l'impulsion est donnée; que le mouvement des échanges est accepté, encouragé par le zèle des particuliers et par le concours de la puissance publique; que le système d'échange tend à devenir ce qu'il doit être, un lien intellectuel entre les nations, un instrument de civilisation et de progrès. C'est aujourd'hui plus qu'une idée, une théorie; c'est un fait. ”

“ But at the same time I must indicate the economic movement, preparing, as it undoubtedly is, yet another new grouping of the nations of the world: the world-wide competition between territorial and national products, characterising the new era, the leading moral ideas of which have yet to breast the horizon. ”

“ A highly unnatural condition has gradually developed in regard to the international relations of nations to one another. These relations increase with the growing production of commodities, with the increased exchange of commodities that is constantly made easier by improved methods of distribution, and by the fact that economic and scientific achievements are becoming the common property of all nations. Trade and customs treaties are made, and, with the aid of international means, expensive thoroughfares are constructed. ”

“ The countries of which it gives us a new knowledge are probably destined to act with great power on our interests, some as the rivals of our commerce, some as the depôts of our manufactures, and some as the recipients of that overflow of population which Europe is now pouring out from all her fields on the open wilderness of the world. ”

“ Industry has overstepped international boundary lines. Through the division of labor we are passing from the independence of nations to the interdependence of nations. International banking, transportation, and commerce, by establishing communities of interest in all parts of the world, are binding the peoples of the earth into one great industrial organization. ”

“ The proximate cause, doubtless, is the increased capacity of the people of this country to consume the produce of other countries, aided and invigorated by the reciprocal facility which our consumption of foreign articles gives to other nations in the extended use of the products of our own industry. ”

“ A consistent foreign policy, undoubtedly to be formulated and pursued by our able Secretaries of State and Commerce, will be of great service in relation to foreign trade and for our general prosperity.
To the intelligent sympathy of the country at large and the coöperation of the Government must be added the eager purpose of the manufacturer, and the interest of young men who will make of export trade their chosen field of labor. ”

“ So far as world or international trade is rightly presented as a competitive process, that competition takes place, not between America, Britain, Germany, but between a number of separate American, British, German firms. ”

“ In the so-called political economies of our forefathers we read a vast deal about the advantages to a country of having an international trade. It was supposed to be one of the great secrets of national prosperity, and a chief study of the nineteenth-century statesmen seems to have been to establish and extend foreign commerce.--Now, Paul, will you tell us the economic theory as to the advantages of foreign commerce? ”

“ Trade policies can help developing countries strengthen property rights, competition, the rule of law, investment, the spread of knowledge, open societies, the efficient allocation of resources, and regional integration—all leading to growth, opportunity, and confidence in developing countries. ”

“ On the other hand, there are imports so entirely of foreign origin, and so free from considerations of competition with domestic industry, that a large revenue may be raised upon them in the custom-house, without disturbing the freedom or equity of international trade. ”

“ To determine what persons and commodities shall be taken abroad is to control what persons and commodities may become the subject of foreign commerce, and that is to control the lifeblood of the commerce itself. ”

“ American business interests are engaged in the work of building an international business structure. American industry, directed from the United States, exploiting foreign resources for American profit, and financed by American institutions, is gaining a footing in Latin America, in Europe and Asia. ”

“ Then came the wars over trade-routes, and the struggle for the control of seagoing commerce. And now, under the dominion of an industrial system that is founded on the machine, the factory, the railroad, the bank and the retail store comes the international competition for foreign markets. ”

“ In Russia, South East Europe, Canada, Australia, South America, Asia and Africa, capital, furnished by the industrial countries, is increasing the production and exportation of food and of raw materials, and is thus indirectly promoting the industry of western Europe. ”

“ Our exports and our economic strength depend upon our access to an open, stable, and growing world market. The nations of the world are becoming increasingly intertwined in a global economy. We must continue our efforts to remove foreign barriers to American goods and services, to open new markets, and to keep them open. ”

“ We are told that it is the common interest of the two nations to open the markets of the world to their commerce, and, by implication, to prevent, wherever possible, the entire or partial closing of any of them. ”

“ The network of material, financial, and intellectual communications, connecting all parts of the developed world, and establishing quick, constant, cheap, and reliable modes of transport for men, goods, money, and information, form the actual basis of what may not improperly be called an economic world-state. Though much of this machinery, with the great work of international trade and capitalistic co-operation which it assists to perform, lies outside the sphere of politics, there are innumerable points of political contact and pressure. ”

“ In what measure the need of individual countries to obtain materials of production from other lands and to find new markets for their own products is responsible for the growth of international dependence. ”

“ The world is entering upon the twentieth century with the nations of the earth bound to each other by much closer relations than existed a hundred years ago, and chief among the forces that draw the countries of the world together is commerce. It is commerce, more than anything else, that has brought about the existing organization of industry in which each nation is dependent upon every other. ”

“ A danger to foreign trade is that our exports might conceivably be limited to certain quarters, and might thus rest upon a frail and shifting foundation. Fortunately, however, this is not so, for our commerce is being built upon the prosperity of the whole world. ”

“ Linking up countries and continents that stand on different levels of development into a system of mutual dependence and antagonism, leveling out the various stages of their development and at the same time immediately enhancing the differences between them, and ruthlessly counterposing one country to another, world economy has become a mighty reality which holds sway over the economic life of individual countries and continents. ”

“ The expansion of commerce and trade, the introduction of new and rapid means of communication, the diffusion of knowledge through books and travel, the establishment of permanent embassies, the making of many treaties containing the same general provisions, and the whole movement of modern civilization toward unifying the interests of states, has rapidly enlarged the range of international action and the scope of international law. ”

“ Banish all restrictions, therefore, from commerce; let every nation apply itself to that particular branch of industry for which it is adapted by nature, and receive in exchange the produce of other countries, raised, in like manner, in conformity with their natural capabilities. ”

“ It has created industries whose raw materials come from abroad and whose products require, for an outlet, the universal or world market. It has thus developed the reciprocal interdependence of nations, no one of which to-day can live without the aid of the others. ”

“ Macara, in the passage I have quoted from his report, said of the interdependence of our different home industries will necessarily be found to exist among the industries engaged in international commerce, and we may, in the not-distant future, see the industries of different nations arranging their affairs in a spirit of peace and amity as nations as a whole have begun to do. ”

“ I shall now give a short sketch of the general principles upon which a system of foreign trade may be established and preserved as long as possible, and of the methods by which it may be again recovered, when, from the natural advantages and superior ability of administration in rival nations, (not from vices at home) a people have lost for a time every advantage they used to draw from their foreign commerce. ”

“ We think nowadays that the resources of a state depend upon the prosperity of the people, no matter whether this prosperity comes from agriculture or from manufactures, 167from internal trade or from foreign trade. Statesmen, however, of the period under discussion, set a peculiarly high value on foreign commerce, and regarded it as a more important branch of industry than any other. ”

“ Contrary, therefore, to common opinion, it is probable that our trade with the colonies, and with the countries which send us the raw materials of our national industry, is not more but less advantageous to us, in proportion to its extent, than our trade with the continent of Europe. We mean in respect to the mere amount of the return to the labour and capital of the country ”

“ The people of a nation have it within their power to advance the interests of their foreign commerce in two ways: one by intelligent legislation at home, and the other by intelligent diplomacy abroad. The shipment of merchandise from one country to another means to the selling nation a foreign market for the raw material, the employment of labor to the extent of from thirty to ninety per cent. ”

“ Putting the issue roughly, but with substantial truth, the generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities, as, for instance, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, etc., are engaged in striving, each to win for itself, and at the expense of the others, the largest possible share of a strictly limited objective—the world market. ”

“ As to commerce, Germany, America, and other industrial nations could more than fill the gap left by England, and such connections should be cultivated as a potent means towards obtaining foreign support to our cause and identification with it. ”

“ While we have been occupied with our own internal development, the European nations have gone in and taken the commerce to which we by the logic of political and geographical considerations are entitled. ”

“ The foreign trade of all civilized nations is now becoming only an extended home trade; all the old ways of commerce are changed or changing, creating amongst all nations a common interest in the welfare of each other. ”

“ Developing countries have sought, for many years, fundamental changes in international economic arrangements so as to make them more equitable, particularly with regard to financial flows, trade, transnational investment, and technology transfer. ”

“ I will not now embark on the troubled sea of foreign policy. But on one point I will touch, since it was raised by the last speaker, and that is the question of our foreign trade. In no department of human activity, I will venture to say, are the intentions of the Almighty more plainly indicated, than in this of the interchange of the products of labour. To each part of the habitable globe have been assigned its special gifts for the use and delectation of Man; to every nation its peculiar skill, its appropriate opportunities. ”

“ So far as the economic principle is concerned, there is likewise a gain when different countries specialize in those forms of production at which their citizens are most effective, and are content to secure through international trade the products of specialization in other countries. ”

“ And finally, that all the benefits which would thereby accrue to the mother country, from the territorial revenue, the duties on trade, the industry and wealth for which that trade would furnish employment, and the treasures which the distribution of produce throughout Europe must bring into the mother country, would greatly exceed the highest advantages that could be calculated upon, even under the most favourable prospects, by the means of the fallen Company or a continuation of its former system. ”