I’m on the road this week, calling in from Houston, Texas. I won’t try to hide my dislike of Houston – it seems to have taken all our bad ideas and run them out to ridiculous extremes. Strip malls and overpriced prefab houses, everything drenched in lawn chemicals. Freeways and tollways, everyone hurtling toward the millennium, one each to a car.

By the stroke of an inverse relationship, Greenpeace is in Houston, one of the nation’s most manipulated environments, to protest on behalf of the Headwaters Forest in Northern California, one of the nation’s rare pristine environments. The Headwaters Forest is among the few remaining stands of old-growth redwood left in the U.S. It is owned by Maxxam Corporation of Houston, which is headed by corporate raider Charles Hurwitz. Since I’m speaking to you from Houston, a city I dislike, I’m going to continue with the theme of things I don’t like and throw a bunch of numbers at you. I usually refrain from this because I don’t think it’s fair, particularly in the audio format, but in this case, going by the numbers seems to be the best way to tell the story.
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If you’re one of those people who follow Congress, you know our elected representatives will soon debate whether we should extend the current most-favored-nation trading status to the People’s Republic of China. Deng Xiaoping is dead but little has changed in China; anyone who has the courage to publicly disagree with the government is dragged off to jail. Once in prison, dissidents are put to work in factories, making among other things, articles of clothing. Clothes made by prisoners are exported to the western market, where they are very competitive, because political prisoners are not paid for their labor. This is what economists call a comparative advantage.

Because the bureaucrats who run the prisons do not share the profits from the clothing with the prisoners they each have more buying power. American industries believe China is a good market and are lobbying Congress to continue China’s most-favored-nation trading status. American corporations are also seeking to increase trade with Burma, where the SLORC – the State Law and Order Restoration Council – is keeping Aung San Suu Chi – who won the Nobel Prize and the presidential election – under house arrest. Corporations are also seeking increased trade with Nigeria – where General Sani Abacha is holding President Moshood Abiola in prison and who executed writer and activist Ken Saro Wiwa.
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There used to be a show on public television in which a guy would talk about the history of technology and the effect it had on political history. For example, the British defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt because they figured out a way to build a better bow and arrow.

History moves in cycles and sometimes a new idea in technology returns us to an older political context. Genetic engineering, for example. The Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri is pushing very hard to have the market accept its host of genetically-altered products. We already know a) these crops are a technological breakthrough and b) an environmental nightmare – but what mutant seed do they carry for our political environment?
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In 1992, we had a presidential election. In 1993, we had NAFTA. In 1996, we had another presidential election. What are we getting this year? More NAFTA. As surely as winter follows autumn, it looks like we are locked into a cycle of elections-then-free trade agreements. As much as politicians tell us we want free trade agreements, they have a habit of negotiating them right after presidential elections and in a congressional off-year.

The subject for debate in the upcoming round of NAFTA is whether to expand the trade agreement to include Chile. This had been scheduled for 1996, but was delayed by – of course – the elections. Free trade enjoys remarkable support in both parties, but politicians don’t want to discuss it during an election year, because free trade is not popular among voters. Free trade is popular among corporations. Discussing free trade in the midst of a presidential debate might highlight the fact that politicians of both parties are more responsive to corporations than they are to voters.
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