Globalization

NAFTA. My family is heavily into agriculture. Whether it is in farming or beef ranching we have run our own place for many generations. But I have one family member in particular who was once a machinist for the “Seattle Times,” before he retired, and when the Free Trade Agreement first came into being he was one of the leaders protesting against sending all of the machinist and agricultural jobs over seas. For now, since NAFTA came into action, my family and I have seen several neighbors and friends, as well as even each other, sell their ranches, or at least part of their places, to get out of debt or cease their way of life because there is no longer any money in producing a crop or raising beef. Now sale prices have lowered considerably and even though there is the USDA seal of approval as well as a “Grown in the US” label on beef and produce that doesn’t mean that from start to finish those products were home grown in the US. Like with beef, it may have he USDA seal and it may say that it is American beef, but more often than not that beef was raised else where, like in Argentina, and then put in a feed lot in America for thirty days or more to be fattened up before they were sent to be butchered. To me that doesn’t make it American beef but because of the Free Trade Agreement this is now possible. I’m not saying that there aren’t some good points and some good results that were made possible by the NAFTA policy, all that I’m saying is if we help other countries shouldn’t we make sure we are stable first, instead of putting a whole community and way of life that had at one point made good money before at risk?

In class on the 8^th of May we watched a couple of videos; one was pro Free Trade and the globalization and the other was against it. The first movie “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman had some good points. This policy has helped many people in other countries get good jobs so that they could have more money for food and other necessities. Plus like Professor Rob Burton says in his book Artists of the Floating World there is a positive side and a negative side. “On the positive side, this has resulted in increased possibilities for exposure to foreign cultures (at the ground level, through increased travel and trade and at the imaginative level, through technological advances such as satellite television and the Internet)” (p. 125). Which is very true!

However, only one person can have a job and there are only so many jobs to go around. Because there are other countries that now export to America for just about anything, the demand on our products has decreased substantially, making it harder for Americans to survive the economic flux. Professor Burton says in his book, “On the negative side, these increased movements continue to cause serious disruptions to the well-being of vulnerable communities (that are exposed to human trafficking, sweatshop working conditions, and drug smuggling, for example) and economics (that are unable to achieve any level of livable sustainability because of stifling competition from more powerful conglomerates)” (p. 125). So besides agriculture jobs being taken away from Americans and given to people in other countries other jobs have been as well. Jobs which make people in third world countries more susceptible to human trafficking and sweatshops so the big businesses can achieve their production rates. Now with these kinds of issues to consider doesn’t it make you wonder like it does me, if this is what the government meant to accomplish when they sent our jobs over seas? Was increased unemployment rates and even more American people without money considered as a possibility before this policy was put into action?