When Corporations Rule the World, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 18Race to the Bottom

Freer markets and freer trade in the new global economic system are what will ultimately put an end to slow growth and high unemployment in the industrial world. . . . that’s what the new economic order is all about.

—BUSINESS WEEK

The recent quantum leap in the ability of transnational corporations to relocate their facilities around the world in effect makes all workers, communities and countries competitors for these corporations’ favor. The consequence is a “race to the bottom” in which wages and social conditions tend to fall to the level of the most desperate.

—JEREMY BRECHER

While competition is being weakened at the core, it is intensifying among smaller businesses, workers, and localities at the periphery ...