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October 25, 1999
Is the Boston Tea Party Over?
by JOHN CAVANAGH
BUY AMERICAN:
The Untold Story of
Economic Nationalism.
By Dana Frank.
Beacon. 352 pp. $26.
Purchase this book online
from Amazon.com
Anyone who has led a discussion on the economy or trade or globalization in
this country has faced the question, Should I buy American? Sounds simple
enough. But this turns out to be a tough question to answer, even if you are
squarely set on helping US workers live in dignity. First, from toys to
televisions, many products are no longer even assembled here. Furthermore, a
lot of the goods made here are produced under abysmal working conditions. Some
imported goods are made by workers whose rights are respected. You might ask
the audience: Is a car made in Ohio by a Japanese company better than a bicycle
made in Taiwan by a US company?
Yet buying American, as University of California historian Dana Frank's
illuminating history reveals, has been a rallying cry for millions in this
country ever since Paul Revere and his cohorts, faces blackened, boarded the
ships of the East India Company monopoly and clogged Boston Harbor with
90,000 pounds of imported tea. Frank shows how, in the decades and
centuries that followed the famous tea party, the movement has always had
a fascinating cross-class composition: Wealthy entrepreneurs joined with
workers to wrap themselves in the American flag of consumption. One result
of this multiclass alliance from 1773 to the present, as Frank points out,
is that "as often as not, their visions of the just economy" are "in conflict
with each other."
This book is a monumental effort of archival work and extensive interviews that
is as insightful on race as it is on class. Frank's early history is
particularly fascinating and fun. Few who read American history books kn ow
that "a Buy American campaign gave birth to the United States of America": As
early as 1764, groups began pledging to give up imported clothes, cheese,
jewelry, furniture, mustard and candy, not to mention tea (local herb tea sales
jumped).
Students at Yale swore off foreign liquor. Indeed, by the early 1770s, all
colonies save New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die" has deep roots) had passed
resolutions to cease purchases of imported clothing. Patriotic rituals like
well-attended public spinning bees were the rage across the colonies. Sales of
all sorts of foreign goods plummeted. The struggle for economic independence
laid the groundwork for the war for political independence.
Yet as Frank reveals, the very US entrepreneurs who led the boycotts went
on to set up the first large-scale factories, paying starvation wages, to
replace imported clothing. The other population forced to produce the domestic
clothing was literally in slavery, including slaves owned by George Washington.
Frank's most important contribution is to expose, at each historic stage of the
Buy American movement, who gained and who lost, and what economic interests
might have motivated participants. Thomas Paine and Paul Revere, great patriots
for sure, were skilled craftsmen who could hardly compete with mass-produced
goods emerging from the Industrial Revolution in England. Nonimportation has
always produced profits for merchants turned hoarders, price gougers or
smugglers. And, indeed, boycott leaders George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and
John Hancock on occasion quietly imported boycotted goods. The Constitution,
which abolished interstate tariffs and creat ed a giant free-trade zone out of
the United States, helped these merchant interests and served as a launching
pad for imperial expansion to the south and west.
For all the populist rhetoric that surrounds protectionism, Frank makes a
strong case that its most ardent supporters in American history have been
domestic entrepreneurs who often have been among the worst exploiters of
workers. On the other hand, she shows that a part of the free-trade movement
has consisted of progressive trustbusters who opposed protection for large-
scale domestic monopolies. Her point is to show that there have alway s been
big business interests on both sides of the debate; a corporation's position
depends on whether it needs protected markets, cheap imports or access to
export markets. In 1892 steel magnate Andrew Carnegie demonstrated vividly how
protectionism doesn't necessarily translate into benefits for workers. That
year, he lowered wages at his big Pennsylvania steel plant in the wake of the
raising of steel tariffs. When workers balked, Carnegie's manager shut down the
plant and hired 300 Pinkerton detectives to bust up the workers' union.
The twentieth-century heyday of the Buy American movement was the early years
of the Great Depression. With William Randolph Hearst Jr. blaring Buy American
stories across the front pages of his twenty-seven newspapers, the movement
took off, culminating in 1933 in Herbert Hoover's signing of a Buy American Act
(requiring the federal government to buy only American-made products) on
his last day in office. The main backers: companies with large domestic
markets. The predominantly white American Federation of Labor (AFL) supported
the act too. Much of the campaign was laced with racism aimed at Chinese,
Japanese and other immigrant workers. (Hearst himself was explicitly anti-
immigrant.)
A number of African-American newspapers and groups responded with a Don't
Buy Where You Can't Work campaign that targeted the blatant discrimination
in many US firms that were then catering to the US market. Nor did the trade
union movement respond with one voice. A number of progressive union
leaders split from the AFL to create the Congress of Industrial Organizations,
which openly reached out to immigrant labor. (In February 1933, The Nation
published an article critical of the Buy American movement. Yet, in an
interesting twist four years later, the magazine joined Chinese-American
organizations in successfully pressing for a boycott of Japanese-made goods to
protest Japanese atrocities in China.)
Franklin Roosevelt entered the presidency in 1933 and reset government
priorities toward working people through jobs programs and federal
protections for workers. Roosevelt was also in favor of freer trade, however,
and h e initiated a series of tariff-reducing trade agreements. Again, the big
backers were corporations. This time it was International Harvester, Zenith and
United Fruit, which wanted foreign markets and protection for their foreign
investments.
Frank guides us through free trade's reign in the early post-World War II
decades. AFL-CIO president George Meany discouraged a Des Moines union's Buy
American campaign by stressing that US workers were dependent on overs eas
markets and that Buy American would force other countries into the embrace of
the Soviet Union and its "satellites." As is well known, at this time the AFL-
CIO joined actively in cold war foreign policy to fight commu nism, in part by
fostering pro-US unions overseas.
Then in the seventies the tide began to turn, as American companies shifted
increasing amounts of investment overseas, causing a hemorrhage of good US
manufacturing jobs, especially in the steel, auto and apparel industries. Frank
offers detailed insights into the Buy American campaigns led by the apparel and
auto unions in the seventies and eighties, campaigns that again, at times, took
on racist overtones. She insightfully criticizes these initiatives for wrongly
viewing imports as the enemy rather than the corporate policies of
relocating production overseas (and exporting goods back to the United
States). Once again, major enterprises--Wal-Mart, New Balance, Milliken &
Co. and others--chimed in with Buy American campaigns of their own.
The dynamic of the trade debate changed dramatically toward the end of the
nineties in two respects. First, while Frank has rightly pointed out that
corporate interests were the main force behind both the free trade and Buy
American movements of the nation's first two centuries, the "fair trade"
movement of the nineties was decidedly different. Yes, firms oriented toward
the domestic market, backed by politicians like Pat Buchanan, did play an
important role in opposing free trade. Far more important, however, was the
emergence of a popular movement that was cross-sectoral and cross-border in its
effort to block new free-trade agreements for North America (NAFTA) and the
world (GATT). In addition to the well-known figures of Ralph Nader and Jesse
Jackson, the leaders were from trade unions, the Sierra Club and Friends of the
Earth, as well as farm groups and others.
While NAFTA and GATT did pass Congress in 1993 and 1994, the AFL-CIO and
its allies were central to Congress's rejection of new presidential trade
negotiation authority in 1997 and 1998. Equally significant is the network of
citizen groups in the United States, Canada, France and elsewhere that came
together in 1997 and 1998 to defeat a proposal to extend corporate rights
called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. These same organizations, plus
dozens of new ones, are planning the free-trade protest of the decade in late
November in Seattle when world leaders gather at a meeting of the World Trade
Organization.
Second, the movements of the nineties were able to break the trade debate out
of its narrow historical dichotomy of protectionism (Buy American) versus free
trade. Indeed, new alternatives are being carved out in the spac e between free
trade and protectionism in the wake of the NAFTA and GATT/WTO battles, and if
Frank is to be chided, it is for skimping on space devoted to these. In a
too-brief final chapter, Frank points to trips by hundreds of US workers to the
Mexican side of the border during the NAFTA fight that radically changed
perceptions. Mexican workers became "real." The enemy became Ford,
General Motors and the other firms that were playing wo rkers off against
one another. The United Electrical workers and Teamsters started
cross-border projects. Groups like the International Labor Rights Fund and
the National Labor Committee in Support of Worker Human Rights in Central
America helped pull nonunion groups into the struggle for workers' rights.
These groups are building a new approach to trade and to the world. Hundreds of
unions and other organizations in the United States and across the Western
Hemisphere, for example, joined together to elaborate Alternatives for the
Americas, which spells out rules for integration that put workers, the
environment and basic human rights at the core of the development process.
Instead of opposing trade and investment, these alternatives focus on insuring
that the benefits are spread more equitably. They call for new economic
agreements that provide for stricter enforcement of labor and environmental
protections, incentives to shift finance from speculation to long-term
investment and debt reduction for poorer nations.
Frank makes the case that the 1760s American sailors and dockworkers, who
were the largest working sector in colonial ports and who opposed the
nonimportation movement, were the precursors of the internationalists of
today. The AFL-CIO and its member unions contain some of the
contradictions of labor organizations of decades past, but they have taken
several important steps toward a coherent internationalist position. SEIU,
UNITE and other unions have reached out to new immigrants through
organizing drives of Latino and Asian workers. AFL-CIO president John
Sweeney's standard speech now hails the "new internationalism," in which
efforts to uplift workers everywhere become central to US labor's agenda.
>From an institution that collaborated with the CIA during the cold war to
undermine democratic trade unions in other countries, the AFL-CIO has,
since the mid-nineties, brought in a dynamic new leadership that is
actively rebuilding international ties. UNITE, the main textile/apparel
union, has shifted from the protectionist campaigns of the past to a major
effort to end sweatshops at home a nd abroad at the end of the nineties.
Frank characterizes the nineteenth century in this country as the century
of protectionism and the twentieth century as the century of free trade.
The transition reflected in large part US companies' shift from domestic to
overseas markets. The emergence of popular movements into the center of
the debates on trade and globalization opens up the possibility of a
twenty-first century in which trade and investment can serve the needs of
dign ified work, healthy communities and a clean environment.
In this new century, millions of Americans striving to support community and to
express solidarity with US workers will Buy American. These are noble and
positive sentiments. Yet, as Frank reminds us, they are most likely to promote
dignified work if they are connected to the expanding efforts to rein in global
corporations and promote workers' and other human rights in all corners of the
earth.
E-mail this story to a friend.
John Cavanagh is director of the Institute for Policy Studies and
co-author (with Sarah Anderson and Thea Lee) of the forthcoming Field
Guide to the Global Economy (New Press).
Send your letter to the editor to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Copyright ©1999 The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved. Unauthorized
redistribution is prohibited.
{{<End>}}
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
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"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said
it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your
own reason and your common sense." --Buddha
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
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It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
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"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
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Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said
it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your
own reason and your common sense." --Buddha
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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