I am travelling most of today and do not have much time. However, there were a few more issues I wanted to raise in relation to the ‘Free Trade’ mini-series of blogs but on Tuesday I ran short of time and thus I thought I would take this chance to round the discussion off. So this blog might be considered Part 4 in that series on free trade. In Part 1, I showed how the mainstream economics concept of ‘free trade’ is never attainable in reality and so what goes for ‘free trade’ is really a stacked deck of cards that has increasingly allowed large financial capital interests to rough ride over workers, consumers and undermine the democratic status of elected governments. In Part 2, I considered the myth of the free market, the damage that ‘free trade’ causes’. In Part 3, fair trade was considered along with so-called ‘free trade’ agreements. Today, some nuances and additional thoughts are provided. The aim of this mini-series is to build a progressives case for opposition to moves to ‘free trade’ and instead adopt as a principle the concept of ‘fair trade’, as long as it doesn’t compromise the democratic legitimacy of the elected government. There is also a video of my keynote presentation at UMKC in September 2016 available in this blog.

This blog continues my mini-series of free trade. In Part 1, I showed how the mainstream economics concept of ‘free trade’ is never attainable in reality and so what goes for ‘free trade’ is really a stacked deck of cards that has increasingly allowed large financial capital interests to rough ride over workers, consumers and undermine the democratic status of elected governments. In Part 2, I considered the myth of the free market, the damage that ‘free trade’ causes’. The aim of this mini-series is to build a progressives case for opposition to moves to ‘free trade’ and instead adopt as a principle the concept of ‘fair trade’, as long as it doesn’t compromise the democratic legitimacy of the elected government. This is a further instalment to the manuscript I am currently finalising with co-author, Italian journalist Thomas Fazi. The book, which will hopefully be out soon, traces the way the Left fell prey to what we call the globalisation myth and formed the view that the state has become powerless (or severely constrained) in the face of the transnational movements of goods and services and capital flows. In this blog (Part 3 and final) I consider the concept of ‘fair trade’ as an alternative to the current situation where modern democracies demonstrate an unwillingness to resist the ever-increasing demands of global capital to cede democratic legitimacy in favour of corporate profits.