LOS ANGELES -- Not many prominent Americans saw the huge cloud forming over globalization as early as did then-President Bill Clinton. After an address on the subject at last year's World Economic Forum in Davos -- in which he virtually pleaded with well-heeled corporate execs to put themselves in the position of those less heeled -- Clinton told me privately that if America failed to tamp down the insecurities created by trade liberalization, the price might be increasing protectionism and recession.
Surely, the turning point was the Battle of Seattle in December 1999, just a month or so before. Seattle was billed as a standoff between the protesters and the establishment. But this Vietnam-era-like clash uncovered an astonishing chasm in American opinion about globalization, despite its having been so highly touted by the U.S. establishment and most notably by the Clinton administration.
A lot has happened since then -- or hasn't happened. Forward movement for the World Trade Organization -- the Vatican of globalization -- is on hold. But as the politics of world economics abhors a vacuum, various restless nations, in Asia and Europe especially, are putting together bilateral trade liberalization and tariff-lowering deals right and left.