Gale: Global Issues in Context, Globalization

In its broadest sense, the term “globalization” refers to the increasing number of ties between different parts of the world, including economic, cultural, and political connections.

The term “globalization” often refers specifically to economic globalization, the increased interdependence of national economies linked by trade, manufacturing, and financial operations carried out by large private companies.

If corporations are free to trade or manufacture as they please, proponents contend, then goods and commodities, from cars to grains, will be made wherever they can be made most efficiently (most profitably), lowering costs and so benefiting buyers everywhere.

In its broadest sense, the term “globalization” refers to the increasing number of ties between different parts of the world, including economic, cultural, and political connections.

Worldwide economic downturns, rising food prices that strain the poorest citizens, the rising cost of industrial production in the most-developed nations, will likely affect all people in all economies.

Interdependent international markets may make some national economies less stable by exposing them to the economic problems of others—as happened with the U.S. mortgage crisis and the global credit crunch in 2008.

Economic globalization is promoted by governments through international trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994).

For example, the U.S. subprime-mortgage crisis that began in 2006 led to global speculation in commodities futures, helping—in combination with the effect of biofuel programs on globalized grain markets—to drive world food prices up drastically in what the United Nations called, in 2008, a silent tsunami that might drive 100 million people into hunger.

Opponents of globalization respond that interdependence actually decreases security by making all nations dependent on a fragile global web of transport and finance: a breakdown in any part of the system can propagate globally, causing harm far from its source.

However, there is a mitigating factor—and it's a big one: the chance to benefit by providing equipment and services for the unprecedented infrastructure investment in rapidly developing economies, as well as the opportunity to serve a billion new consumers in those markets.”

However, there is a mitigating factor—and it's a big one: the chance to benefit by providing equipment and services for the unprecedented infrastructure investment in rapidly developing economies, as well as the opportunity to serve a billion new consumers in those markets.”

Some economists assert that newly globalized markets worsen recession risks.

Many of its participants say they do not oppose globalization as such, merely one form of it—the neoliberal, capitalist variety that, they say, privileges profits and corporate power over human and environmental well-being.

For example, the U.S. subprime-mortgage crisis that began in 2006 led to global speculation in commodities futures, helping—in combination with the effect of biofuel programs on globalized grain markets—to drive world food prices up drastically in what the United Nations called, in 2008, a silent tsunami that might drive 100 million people into hunger.

For example, the U.S. subprime-mortgage crisis that began in 2006 led to global speculation in commodities futures, helping—in combination with the effect of biofuel programs on globalized grain markets—to drive world food prices up drastically in what the United Nations called, in 2008, a silent tsunami that might drive 100 million people into hunger.

If corporations are free to trade or manufacture as they please, proponents contend, then goods and commodities, from cars to grains, will be made wherever they can be made most efficiently (most profitably), lowering costs and so benefiting buyers everywhere.

U.S. pundit Thomas Friedman, a prominent advocate of globalization, argued in the New York Times on 28 March 1999 that the “driving idea behind globalization is free-market capitalism.

Anti-globalization activists argue that globalization diminishes the sovereignty of states in favor of corporate power, undermines democracy, funnels resources from poor to rich nations, accelerates damage to the environment, and exploits the desperation of workers in what is commonly phrased as a “race to the bottom.”

Business journalist and author Harold L. Sirkin claims that “the [2008 economic] downturnâ€Ã‚¦pinch[ed] consumers' wallets and reduce[ed] business spending.â€Ã‚¦

If corporations are free to trade or manufacture as they please, proponents contend, then goods and commodities, from cars to grains, will be made wherever they can be made most efficiently (most profitably), lowering costs and so benefiting buyers everywhere.

Anti-globalization activists argue that globalization diminishes the sovereignty of states in favor of corporate power, undermines democracy, funnels resources from poor to rich nations, accelerates damage to the environment, and exploits the desperation of workers in what is commonly phrased as a “race to the bottom.”

They argue that large amounts of money (capital) are increasingly free to cross national borders while workers are either forbidden to move from one nation to another or are allowed to do so mostly as low-paid foreign laborers with few rights.

As corporations are subject to fewer regulations by governments, anti-globalization critics argue that they are more free to destroy rainforests, extract minerals without compensating local peoples, and cause other forms of environmental and social damage.