FTA = Virtual Economies?

The US Business & Industry Council posted an article by Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, called November Trade Figures Show Record Deficit which complains about the growing US trade deficit and concludes that:

...the problem rests with the NAFTA-style trade agreements signed by Presidents Bush and Clinton. These agreements have failed to boost America's global competitiveness or its living standards. In fact, the huge, rapidly rising manufactures deficit shows that these trade agreements have really been outsourcing agreements. Their aim has been to send production overseas to low-cost countries and keep the U.S. market open to the resulting output, not to boost exports of American-made products. What’s needed now is the stabilizing of America's trade flows, and that will require a completely new approach to U.S. trade policy -- one that puts domestic manufacturing first as opposed to sacrificing it on the altar of free trade theory.

What is going on here is the creation of a virtual economy in which the economic boundaries do not coincide with the political ones. The increasing movement of manufacture and services overseas means that the military commitment must expand to cover this.

The old model of importing of raw materials and the exporting of finished goods and services no longer applies to a single country. The major capitalist countries must increasingly interfere with the political economy of countries where their economic interests are now located. This will cause a collision between the economic overlords and the nationalistic tendencies of the local capitalist class. This will be particularly evident in the former communist super-powers like Russia and China. These have the military might to confront the USA and the EU.