Friday, August 11, 2017

NAFTA in a Multipolar World Economy

Discussions of globalization often seem rooted in an assumption that the main choices, either for the US or for other countries, are either nationalism or global. But there is another possibility, which is that the world economy evolves to a "multipolar" setting, which is based on primarily regional agglomerations of cross-national trade. In this situation, the issue for the US economy is whether it will be part of its geographically natural multipolar group, here in the Americas, or whether it will try view itself as a group of one, competing in the global economy with multipolar groups in Europe and in Asia. Your attitude toward the North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, may vary according to whether you see it as one of many trade deals in a globalizing economy, or whether you see it as the specific trade deal for building a US-centered trading bloc in a multipolar economy.

Michael O’Sullivan and Krithika Subramanian lay out the case for the multipolarity hypothesis in "Getting Over Globalization," written as a report for Credit Suisse Research (January 2017). They write:
"Globalization is running out of steam. We can see this in various ways. Our measure for tracking globalization – made up of flows of trade, finance, services and people – has ebbed in the past year, and has slipped backwards over the course of the past three years so that it has dropped below the levels reached in 2012–2013 to about the same level as crisis-ridden 2009–2010 ... . Perhaps the most basic representation of globalization is trade, and this is sluggish or according to many measures it is plateauing. ... Other indicators of globalization paint a more negative picture – cross-border flows of financial assets (relative to GDP) have continued downward from their pre-financial-crisis peak, most likely because of the effects of regulation and the general shrinking of the banking sector. Trade liberalization, as measured by the Fraser Institute’s economic freedom of the world indices, has been slowly declining since its peak in 2000, although it is still at a relatively healthy level. ... It should be said that the extent of globalization/multipolarity is still at a historically high level, although it is hard not to have the impression that it is on the verge of a downward correction, especially once we consider some of the underlying dynamics. ...

"One of the notable sub-trends of globalization has been a much better distribution of the world’s economic output, led by what were once regarded as overly populous, third world countries such as India and China. This has fueled multipolarity – the rise of regions that are now distinct in terms of their economic size, political power, approaches to democracy and liberty, and their cultural norms. ...
We believe that the world is now leaving globalization behind it and moving to a more distinct multipolar setting. ...

"The ... scenario is based on the rise of Asia and a stabilization of the Eurozone so that the world economy rests, broadly speaking, on three pillars – the Americas, Europe and Asia (led by China). In detail, we would expect to see the development of new world or regional institutions that surpass the likes of the World Bank, the rise of “managed democracy” and more regionalized versions of the rule of law – migration becomes more regional and more urban rather than cross-border, regional financial centers develop and banking and finance develop in new ways. At the corporate level, the significant change would be the rise of regional champions, which in many cases would supplant multinationals. We would also expect to see uneven improvements in human development leading to more stable, wealthier local economies on the back of a continuation of the emerging market consumer trend. ...

"An interesting and intuitive way of seeing how the world has evolved from a unipolar one (i.e. USA) to a more multipolar one is to look at the location of the world’s 100 tallest buildings. The construction of skyscrapers (200 meters plus in height) is a nice way of measuring hubris and economic machismo, in our opinion. Between 1930 and 1970, at least 90% of the world’s tallest buildings could be found in the USA, with a few exceptions in South America and Europe. In the 1980s and 1990s, the USA continued to dominate the tallest tower league tables, but by the 2000s there was a radical change, with Middle Eastern and Asian skyscrapers rising up. Today about 50% of the world’s tallest buildings are in Asia, with another 30% in the Middle East, and a meager 16% in the USA, together with a handful in Europe. In more detail, three-quarters of all skyscraper completions in 2015 were located in Asia (China and Indonesia principally), followed by the UAE and Russia. Panama had more skyscraper completions than the USA."
If one believes that the US should view its economy as part of an emerging American bloc in a multipolar world economy, the North American Trade Agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico is the foundation for that bloc. C. Fred Bergsten and Monica de Bolle have edited an e-book titled A Path Forward for NAFTA, a collection of 11 short essays discussing NAFTA "modernization," "renegotiation," and "updating" from various national, industry, and foreign policy perspectives (Peterson Institute for International Economics Briefing 17-2, July 2017).  They give some sense of the possibilities for cooperation and agreement, and the unlikeliness that such an agreement will address bilateral trade deficits, in the "Overview" essay:
"The overarching goal of negotiators from the three participating countries must be to boost the competitiveness of North America as a whole, liberalizing and reforming commercial relations between the three partner countries and responding to the many changes in the world economy since NAFTA went into effect in 1994. These changes include the digital transformation of commerce, which has enabled sophisticated new production methods employing elaborate supply chains, transforming North America into a trinational manufacturing and services hub. But concerns about labor, the environment, climate change and energy resources, and currency issues have become more acute than they were at the time NAFTA started. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was thus correct when he said that NAFTA “didn’t really address our economy or theirs [Mexico and Canada] in the way they are today.” ...

"The broadest consistent goal shared by the NAFTA countries should be to strengthen the international position of North America as a whole in a world of tough competition from China and others. Beyond that objective, the negotiators can take steps toward achieving regional energy independence, since all three countries are large consumers and producers of different kinds of energy, from those based on fossil fuels to those derived from new technologies and renewable sources. There is also plenty of room for additional or indeed full liberalization of key sectors, such as financial services and telecommunications, to the benefit of all three economies.

"The new NAFTA could borrow some of the TPP’s innovative approaches and embrace cutting-edge standards for issues such as e-commerce, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and other sectors that have become central to international trade and investment. The North American partners might be able to help resolve a politically inflammatory issue plaguing trade agreements worldwide: incorporating dispute settlement mechanisms that will make their provisions enforceable and thus credible without being perceived as undermining national sovereignty and widely shared concepts of fairness. Another step in this direction would be to work out a North American competition policy that would enable the three countries to disavow the use of antidumping and countervailing duties against each other, as Australia and New Zealand have done. The NAFTA partners might also strive to achieve a degree of regulatory coherence that has so far eluded the United States and the European Union in their efforts to forge a transatlantic agreement. NAFTA negotiators could permit like-minded countries, notably the members of the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia, and Peru, as well as Mexico), all of which are already free trade agreement partners of the United States, to join NAFTA. ...

"[T]rade agreements are inappropriate and ineffective vehicles for attempting to reduce trade imbalances. The reason is that external imbalances are created by internal macroeconomic imbalances and can be remedied only by changes in the latter. Hence continued US insistence on cutting its trade deficit, especially via bilateral efforts with Mexico, would almost surely lead to dissatisfaction with the outcome and a potential blowup of the entire agreement. Taking the concern about trade deficits at face value, moreover, is a prescription for deadlock with Canada and Mexico, both of which run global trade and current account deficits on the same order of magnitude as the United States. Hence they properly view themselves as deficit countries that need to strengthen, not weaken, their external economic positions. They are most unlikely to accede to US demands to strengthen its external position at their expense, even if the economics were to make that possible, and can in fact be expected to argue (correctly) that the three North American deficit countries should work together to improve their joint and several external positions with the rest of the world.
Those interested in NAFTA and the possibility of an emerging multipolar world economy might wish to check some earlier posts: