Human Rights & Trade

(from Chalmers Johnson's book: "Blowback") - Metropolitan Books - 2000

"The second aspect of human rights in China we must recognize is to ensure that poor working conditions and prison labor in China do not end up destroying the livelihoods of American workers. Without question the most powerful human rights tool the United States could wield would be to deny access to the American market to products from multinational companies that have abandoned American workers to seek out low-wage foreign workers lacking in economic or political rights of any sort, Not to speak of human rights.

The economics profession may attack such policies as “protectionism”, but the time is long past when the United States should allow corporations to use the bottom line, “globalization" or the pressures of competition as excuses for their indifference to basic human rights at home or abroad. Failure to consider this dimension of the rights question leaves the United States open to a charge of hypocrisy.

The answer to these problems, in the sense of helping to promote China’s economic development while preventing its predatory trade policies from provoking international conflict, is managed trade. All this means is the use of public policy to manage outcomes rather than procedures."