For all the benefits of our free-trade policies, country still pays a price

The editor of the Economist this week delivered a hopeful but realistic view of the benefits of globalization through the prism of America's political campaign.

John Micklethwait, editor of the London-based weekly news magazine, told a Minneapolis audience of 400 people that shuttered U.S. steel plants and antitrade rhetoric resonate more with voters these days than do the inexpensive imported goods that they enjoy thanks to liberal trade policies.

Micklethwait uses what he calls "provocative paranoia" to underscore how a reversal of these free-trade policies would cripple the world economy, with the heaviest burdens falling, as usual, on the poor.

Resentment toward the unpopular Bush administration, stagnant wages for the working class and technology that has replaced some U.S. jobs, Micklethwait said, have been lumped into political attacks against global trade that has precluded a good deal with Colombia and revived protectionist talk in Washington.

But he is no America-basher. This country, Micklethwait said, is about democracy and capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurialism.

"The world needs more of that. And there's a difference between that and pushing around other countries," he said.

The Economist, which embraces the science behind global warming, predicts that the United States and other industrialized countries eventually will adopt carbon caps and taxes, which will help drive electric cars, alternative fuels and new, cleaner technologies into global markets.

"China is getting better," Micklethwait told attendees at the inaugural Hendrickson Forum, presented at St. Mary's University of Winona by the Hendrickson Institute for Ethical Leadership. "But freedom lags economic growth."

Micklethwait was on hand as the forum's first guest speaker. Brother Louis DeThomasis, chancellor of the 6,000-student university, also named Warren and Mary Lynn Staley recipients of the Hendrickson Medal for Ethical Leadership.

Warren Staley, the recently retired CEO of Cargill Inc., ran the global food processing and commodities trading firm during its best-performing decade. The Staleys are active in pursuits ranging from Third World micro-loans to early-childhood education.

Also attending was Liu Baocheng, director of Beijing's Center for International Business Ethics, who earlier studied and taught business at Seton Hall University. He agreed with Micklethwait's assertions that China and other developing nations will cut pollution as their people get more affluent and their environmental movements grow.

The Bush administration has refused to enter into a global compact about climate change, in part because of the reluctance of India and China to sign on as well.

The United States went through a dirty, 50-year industrial revolution before industry finally addressed pollution concerns.

"China is young as an industrial country," Liu said. "And America is like the old man telling the young man to 'Be like I am now.' "

It will take awhile.

The two internationalists said that U.S. innovation, technology and know-how can deliver cleaner, better power plants, electric cars and other advances that will provide economic and environmental improvements around the globe.