If all you have read of the Chamber of Commerce story are the headlines and snippets, you probably got the bottom line correctly. The "U.S." Chamber of Commerce has very likely been taking foreign money and "investing in" U.S. politicians (and I know you know I mean "donating to") — in massive doses. Shock! say you. Yet more Citizens United money carpet-bombing our electoral process! And this time, foreign!
I raised the spectre here of a descent into client-nation status. When your creditors put money into (buying) your political process, you get the rulers they want, not the ones you want. The U.S. has client nations and rulers all around the world. They don't make the news; only when clients push back — Iraq and Afghanistan — is it news. And then only because of our clearly recognized desire that they be "better" (more submissive) clients. I would venture to guess that most U.S. voters would prefer that Iraq and Afghanistan be better clients. (Needless to say, that's the inverse of "spreading democracy.")
But Rachel raises a more direct point. What is the immediate interest of those foreign contributors to U.S. elections? Well, more outsourced jobs, of course. And that's why I called them the "U.S." Chamber of Commerce; because they are themselves clients, and not of U.S. interests.
The segment is rich in information:
"These corporations are trying to pay for a Congress that will keep these policies going" — Celinda Lake in the clip.
There seems to be only two resolutions. The first is a wage-race to the bottom by U.S. labor, so they can compete with third-world sweatshops (and second-world engineering firms). The second is some way of keeping U.S. capital from going overseas. Earlier I noted Ian Welsh's take on this aspect of the issue:
If you can build a factory overseas which produces the same goods for less, meaning more profit for you, why would you build it in the US?Mr. Welsh offers a range of options in his own post here.
Until that question is adequately answered, by which I mean “until it’s worth investing in the US”, most of the discretionary money of the rich will either go into useless speculative activities like the housing and credit bubbles, which don’t create real growth in the US, or they will go overseas.
You can see this issue through a business lens, or a nationalist lens. Oddly, this time the business lens is also a nationalist lens — if you're rooting for all of our national competitors.
The U.S. [sic] Chamber of Commerce, ladies and gentlemen; here through the end of this century.
GP
