By some measures, playing the globalization game has paid off. World sales of Southern goods are at record levels. The region has drawn over half of all the foreign businesses that have moved to the U.S. in the 1990s, and today, one out of eight manufacturing employees in the South work for an overseas owner. But the quest for world-class status has come at a high price. Taxpayers have been the biggest losers of these high-stakes industry bidding wars.
Southern leaders say they're doing it for the jobs.
What's more, the South is learning that the globalization game is often a crap shoot that plays both ways. Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas topped the list of states that have felt the pain of footloose factories abandoning their communities and moving to even more profitable Third World pastures. In some cases, these are the same foreign firms that were coaxed to the South with lavish incentives only a decade ago. Without fair trade and economic democracy, the world only has to look to the South to see the rigged rules and high costs of playing the globalization game. Chris Kromm is editor of Southern Exposure magazine, published by the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C., and writes on globalization in the U.S. South.