Those of us who believe in the manifest benefits of trade have a special responsibility to acknowledge that global integration poses new challenges. We must ensure that the still-evolving international economic system honors our values. In the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, our own economy underwent accelerated integration at the national level, driven by the communications and transportation advances of the day. The federal government, responding to consumers and workers, came to recognize that a greater degree of interconnection between states necessitated a greater need for common rule setting at the national level. Otherwise, we would risk a race to the bottom, a bottom in which state governments could not uphold fair labor standards, regulate product safety, protect the environment or collect enough taxes to invest in schools and roads.
Global integration poses a similar challenge at the international level today.
At a time when the world is coming together and man-made and natural barriers to trade are coming down, it becomes vital to prevent a race to the bottom. We must not and will not build a global economy in which capital races from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, playing off its greater mobility to the detriment of environmental, consumer, and worker protections. For global economic integration to be sustainable, it needs to be balanced and honor our values in these areas. That is what the President means when he says that we need to put a human face on the global economy. We have begun to make progress, but the pace admittedly has been slow.