Companies, in this view, have less loyalty to workers and communities than ever before. There has to be some check on this. To consider the case of Canada's Methanex Corp. against the United States is to get a sense of how the 1990s trade rules are banging up against broader social concerns. On March 25, Gov. Gray Davis ordered the phase-out within California of a fuel additive known as MTBE, which had been detected in drinking water in Santa Monica, Santa Clara and South Lake Tahoe, as well as elsewhere in the United States. This case shows that we have to pay foreign companies to maintain that right.
Economists regard free trade as just about as controversial as motherhood.
Imports pay off, they insist, by expanding consumer choice and keeping a lid on prices. Exports, they say, fuel growth in high-wage jobs and have become an increasingly important weapon in America's economic arsenal. The club, which numbered just 23 nations when the modern trading system began to take shape after World War II, now has 135 members and will soon probably add China. The former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Kyrgyzstan are already in, and among the 31 countries on the waiting list are Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. While the 1990s have been disastrous for Japan and Russia, trade was hardly the culprit.