The US wants to change the rules for the market they are part of together with Canada and Mexico, the so-called North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but this change is being negotiated by denying all the conditions of the free market and the competition that , have always characterized US economic and financial policy.
The United States has based all their political and economic action in dealing with other countries on the free trade paradigm.
Alan Greenspan, in his article: The Age of Turbulence, states that the wider the competition and the more solid the state of law, the greater the amount of wealth produced.
US President George W. Bush (father) stated that conflicts, instability and poverty follow the periods associated with the country's protectionist policy.
The affirmation of globalization has its pivot point in the transition from the old international order based on the central role of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the purpose of which was a general lowering of duties, new 1995 agreements, which gave birth to the WTO (World Trade Organization), whose goal is the abolition or reduction of tariff barriers to international trade.
The decision-making process within the WTO organization is to the advantage of the largest, and particularly of the USA; it is to be reminded in this regard that the rest of the world sees the market as a dominant force, since local governments are in fact excluded from the great strength of the international market.
This new political, economic and social order (WTO) is under the guidance of the countries with great contractual weight, namely the USA.
Globalization, therefore, has been organized according to the principles of radical liberalism that marginalizes the role of public institutions, assuming a market-guaranteed order without the need for a government of the phenomenon.
Globalization has, in fact, led to the emergence of a world market unmanaged by equally-sized institutions, and the WTO has imposed rules and forms of public funding on unacceptable businesses and conceived as a cause of distortion of competition.
The US has driven global market development and its rules as a direct consequence have become a reference for all countries.
Despite these historical pasts, the US, the 17, have made the NAFTA negotiations steep over how to consider the territorial origins of automotive components.
The US has proposed that it is at least 85% of this component made in North America and at least the 50% coming from the USA.
The previous rule provided only that the 62% of the components should be built in North America to be considered as "free trade".
The conditions proposed by the USA are considered unacceptable by the other two countries because they are iniquitous and unjustifiable, even in the light of the positive experience gained in the field.
Some analysts have advanced the hypothesis that these conditions have been specially built by the US to rescind the two countries from the deal to follow Trump's policy of renegotiating all trade agreements under the America's First Rules.
"America First" is in fact a new political and economic paradigm of opposite sign to libertarian politics up to now supported by the US, of which the WTO is a principled expression.
Changing the paradigm means producing a very important economic and social impact not only for the US, but especially for other nations that have been trying to match the standards set by the WTO for years.
Moving from a liberal market to a semi-protected or secured market means wreaking havoc on what has been built to date, denying the benefits that have been swept up to the economies of the countries until yesterday.
According to some economists, in life if not acting, it suffers, but it is also true that if you act in the wrong direction the catastrophe is certain.
By Pasquale Preziosa