This posting continues what this blog is currently doing;
that is, it is developing, in real time, a civics course of study on foreign
trade and how that trade has affected the availability of jobs in the US. To date, the blog has identified nine
insights and related lesson ideas that potentially will make up the core of the
course. Of course, this is not a real
unit; this exercise is for demonstration purposes.
The tenth
insight is:
Assisting the transfer of jobs abroad
has been the rise of transnational corporations. These corporations are global in operations
and have increasingly acted beyond the legal authority of national governments
in that they can readily shift assets from country to country. Some make a distinction between multinational
corporations (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs). The difference is a technical one; if the
entity has identifiable headquarters in particular nations it is an MNC, if it
doesn’t it’s a TNC. In either case,
their rise in economic and political viability has been made possible by
liberalized economic policies since World War II, a lessening of nationalistic
perspective in Western countries in favor of global perspectives, and freer
market operations.[1]
Lesson idea: Have
students name a few products they like or find they buy regularly. Teacher makes a list of these products. The students are assigned to “Google” them
and see what companies produce them. Are
these companies owned by other companies?
Where are these companies headquartered? In how many countries are those companies
doing business? In other words, how
expansive are these entities? Hopefully,
the student can begin to gain some understanding how transnational or
multinational corporations have become central to the US economy and the
economies around the world. Discuss what
political consequences such expansion can mean to the politics of any single
country. A film that is futuristic that
taps into what the existence of transnational corporations can lead to is the
1978 offering, Rollerball. Interested students might be assigned to see
this film and report on its story line and its theme to the rest of the class.
The eleventh
insight is:
Globalization in trade has lowered
consumer prices and increased the spreading of technology. Often this has been to lesser developed
nations. The anticipation of these
benefits played a significant role in encouraging lawmakers to pass
legislation, like the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, that has made possible the
resulting globalization of trade. The
voice that has consistently had major concerns over such developments have been
the labor unions who predicted accurately the subsequent loss in manufacturing jobs
to foreign countries.[2]
Lesson idea: The fight
over the North American Trade Agreement in the early nineties is a good case
study of this insight. Students could
construct a timeline of that debate as a class effort. The teacher on the black/white board draws a
long line and underneath, toward the bottom of the board, writes in the name of
every sixth months that covers the years from 1990 to 1994. Students begin to fill-in the timeline with
events that made up the debate over whether NAFTA would be established and
become the international set of rules governing trade among the US, Mexico, and
Canada.
The twelfth
insight is:
The Peterson memo, identified in a
previous posting, warned the Nixon Administration of the impending global,
competitive economy and that further recommended the nation’s federal
government take an aggressive posture concerning investment in plant and
equipment, research and development, public infrastructure, and better
education and training of America’s workforce.
The memo was given a cold reception by Nixon’s State Department. State saw it as too dismissive of the need to
establish better relations with other nations, too nationalistic, and an
encouragement to Congress to pass higher tariffs and restrictive regulations on
foreign trade. Some argue that State’s
reaction was an example of Marshall Plan thinking being extended too long.[3]
Lesson idea: The class
or a group of students role-play a group of advisers who advise a leader of a
European nation, say West Germany, or Japan back at the time the Peterson
memo. They illustrate or act out the advice
they would give the leader as they “digest” the arguments contained in the
memo.
These three
insights will do it for this posting.
Next, the developer wants to add a concept to the list of ideas this
unit has identified as suitable for having a conceptualization exercise. To date, the concepts, comparative advantage,
productivity, and balance of trade/payments, have been highlighted. To this list, he wants to add the concept,
currency manipulation. This can be added
to the type of lesson identified for the other three in which students, using
inductive reasoning, develop a list of attributes and form a definition. To each one of these concepts, students can
be asked: what is the significance of
this idea?
With that,
this entry describing the development of this course is completed. There will probably be one or two more
postings dedicated to this development.
[1] Edward Alden, Failure
to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind
in the Global Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) AND Wikipedia,
“Multinational Corporation,” accessed September 18, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_corporation .
[2] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global
Economy.
[3] Ibid.
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