Trade issues will move to job protection: Subroto
Trade issues will move to job protection: Subroto
NUSA DUA, Bali (JP): Senior Indonesian economist Subroto predicted yesterday that the most important trade issues between nations would not be the nationality of products but rather, where would trade generate jobs, and to whom.
"The issues of job creation and job protection are sure to be paramount on the agenda of political leaders throughout the industrialized world for the coming years," Subroto, former secretary-general of the Vienna-based Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said.
He told the 19th Asian Advertising Congress that the loss of jobs, due to increased competition between the old industrial and new industrial countries should not be taken lightly.
In fact, he noted, unemployment problems have forced many developed countries to toughen their positions in trade issues and had led to increasing tensions in multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations.
Citing examples, he pointed to the tough and emotional negotiations between the United States and China and between the U.S. and Japan.
Subroto was the main speaker yesterday at the session on the topic of uptrends in Asia, which was chaired by Sabam Siagian, former Indonesian ambassador to Australia.
He also cited the tendency among U.S. and European countries to use social dumping -- linking trade issues to workers rights and human rights, social conditions and environmental standards -- as a new form of protection of jobs.
However, he saw such a move as the manifestation of bad faith, a case of industrialized countries using whatever pretext to rob the developing world of its few competitive advantages.
"If industrialized countries freely take advantage of their technological lead and mastery of management, marketing and financial techniques, on what grounds do they try to prevent new comers from taking advantage of their cheap labor and natural resources?" he wondered.
Suspicion
He pointed to a lingering suspicion in many quarters in Asia that underneath whatever arguments both the U.S. and Europe use in trade negotiations lies the unspoken reluctance to acknowledge the end of Western supremacy and to share economic power.
Earlier in his presentation, Subroto, who held several portfolios in Indonesian cabinets in the 1970s and 1980s, observed the emergence of a new economic powerhouse in the Asia Pacific region, besides the U.S. and Europe.
He also pointed to the emergence of Asia as a new center of economic gravity, thanks to the extraordinary process of fast and steady growth in East and Southeast Asia between the 1960s and 1980s.
"We are already, economically speaking, in a fully tripolar world with the three centers of power, Western Europe, North America and East/Southeast Asia, in a position of strategic economic comparison," he said.
He predicted that if Asia sustains its explosive growth for another generation, its output will almost certainly overtake North America and Europe.
"Nonetheless, it does not mean that Asia will dominate them," he said.
Subroto, therefore, considers it a mistaken belief for industrialized countries to fear that Asia is stealing jobs and output from them.
"That need not to be the case, since trade is never a zero-sum game," Subroto argued.
He said there is no reason for Western countries to take a confrontational attitude towards the emerging countries in Asia because they can get a fair share of these markets if they adjust their strategies to the new realities of the tripolar world order.
Subroto called on the East and West to meet in an interactive process of rational discourse and human compassion and in peaceful competition and enlightenment in mind and heart, as well as in markets and economies. (vin)