But what, precisely, are we talking about here? "Neo-liberalism": it goes closely together with "globalization." It’s the onward march of business, of private property, of free trade, all linking together more and more parts of the world in a web of commercial relationships. Increasingly, governments are being forced into the back seat, yielding their former say over what is produced, and who gets what portion, to the canny businessman, to the self-appointed entrepreneur. Power arising from force of law or tradition now pales before the sheer force crystallized in money - conferred in many cases by those with nothing to their names save an eloquent view of the future involving the glittering prospect of much more money for those willing now to put up some of it in financial backing.
One sign of these new developments is the growing trend of what you could call "regional commercial consolidation." Businessmen, remember, are in the ascendant, government officials in the descendant, and one thing businessmen heartily despise is border controls: inspections, customs duties, tariffs. These basically give a bunch of uniformed officials the chance to throw their authority around - to poke into other people’s bags, for example, to force truck drivers to spend days-in-a-row in line at the border post, and ships’ captains to keep in order reams of official paperwork. And they wreak havoc on your sales, too. You try to set a price for what you’re selling in another country, but it can be increased at any time by some bureaucrat’s decision to raise tariffs.
Better to cut down on these border controls - or, better still, to do away with them entirely. And so the march of neo-liberalism since the end of the Second World War has meant more and more "free trade" - partly in the form of bilateral agreements between pairs of countries; and, at the other extreme, partly in the successive tariff-reducing trade "rounds" negotiated under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT - replaced on 1 January 1995 by the World Trade Organization).
Then there have been the solutions in the middle: the various free-trade regional arrangements. The European Coal and Steel Community, later European Economic Community/European Community/European Union was the pioneer in this category. What began in 1952 as an arrangement for free trade in coal and steel under multinational control, and which achieved complete abolition of all tariffs between member countries by 1968, has since developed into a multi-faceted, Europe-wide governmental superstructure displacing ever-more sovereignty above the national level. Clearly, the free-trade contagion can easily spread - and then grow into something else entirely.
This might be a valuable lesson for those across the Atlantic who somehow arrived late to the free-trade party. The leading economies of North America finally caught up with the neo-liberal wave in 1988 with the US-Canada free trade agreement of that year. Six years later, after a difficult 1993 spent selling it to voters and national legislatures, the North American Free Trade Agreement extended this regime to Mexico.
But it wasn’t easy getting that far. While the 1988 treaty attracted little opposition within the US, the opposite was true in Canada, many of whose citizens feared that the proposed abolishing of commercial barriers would lead to a cultural flood from south of their border wiping out all that was distinctive about Canadian heritage, attitudes, and the way-of-life.
The opposite was the case when it came time to ratify NAFTA. This time many Americans were fiercely opposed, worrying not so much about American culture but American jobs: either there would be a flood from south-of-the-border of impoverished Mexicans willing to work much more cheaply than Americans, or else those jobs would simply be moved by American companies in the other direction. Ross Perot, the Great Texas Challenger to George Bush (the elder) and Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election, emerged on the public stage once again to warn loudly of the "great sucking sound" Americans could expect if NAFTA was ratified by the Congress, namely the sound of those well-paid American jobs disappearing forever southwards. He went on to debate NAFTA on national television with no less than the sitting vice-president – Al Gore – where he came off as clearly second-best in his command of the facts about what NAFTA really would mean to the US economy. That deflating experience, and the steady support for passage of President Clinton, finally ensured that Congress gave its approval so that NAFTA could become reality.
To what gain? As things have turned out - and as should have been expected, at least from the example of the European Economic Community’s achievements in the 1950s and 1960s - the expansion of trade which NAFTA has made possible has raised incomes and brought greater prosperity than would otherwise be the case to each country concerned, and especially to Mexico. While the 1995 Mexican financial crisis might seem to have reflected poorly upon the whole arrangement, a much better token of NAFTA’s impact in opening up Mexican society to modernity was the election as president last July of Vicente Fox - formerly a businessman with the Mexican subsidiary of Coca-Cola, but more importantly the first president in 71 years who did not belong to Mexico’s PRI, the "Party of Institutionalized Revolution."
More recently, the recent inter-American summit held in Quebec resulted in agreement among the national leaders there to push ahead in expanding NAFTA - or at least NAFTA-like arrangements - to the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Even prior to that Chile had been proposed as a candidate country to add to NAFTA. What is more - and in parallel with the move towards monetary union now taking place within the European Union - both Ecuador and Argentina had already joined Panama in adopting the US dollar as the national currency - not out of any special love for the "Norteamericanos" or for the dead presidents on their banknotes, but as a radical solution to their particular economic problems.
It is notable here that it is the dollar that was adopted here, and not some multinational composite currency such as the European Union’s euro. This reflects the overwhelming weight of the American economy in comparison to any of its individual hemispheric trade partners - or even in comparison with all of them together! Viewed another way, it is this potential American "hegemony" which has prompted plenty of worries through history which have up to now blocked most attempts at any sort of formal pan-hemispheric cooperation. Such fears can be likened to fear of German domination in Europe, which has had a similar effect through time - quite apart from the devastating wars that has caused.
But, in the neo-liberal age, such objections seem more and more passé in light of the greater economic prosperity that closer international cooperation - together with lower trade barriers - can bring. In this respect Europe has shown the way, while the Western Hemisphere has mostly followed behind - but, "great sucking sound" or no, it has been vital for the United States and her closest neighbors to follow this same enlightened path.