The debate about the consequences and the issues related to globalization was at the center of the final discussions of the presidential campaign, as it has been proved again during the pathetic confrontation between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. It will not end May 7th and will continue during the political battle of the general elections which will start the day after. Until now, that debate has missed one essential issue: globalization will not stop if, because of their votes, French people declare they are hostile to it. This phenomenon is irreversible and it affects all the countries. Donald Trump failure to slow it is a good proof of that. Congress refused to finance the wall along the Mexican border, which was his most symbolic proposal and the idea of a general taxation of imported products has been abandoned. The only country which is staying outside of globalization until now is North Korea. Is it a good model?
The collapse of communism in Europe has permitted to the States belonging to the Warsaw Pact to participate to international exchanges. Reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 allowed China to join the world economy with the success we see today. During a period of time inferior to one generation, the country became the second economic power and has taken out from the most absolute poverty hundreds of millions of Chinese. Asia followed that way. Latin America, in despite of its political and financial bumps tried to join the trend and Cuba, whether it pleases or not to Jean Luc Melenchon, is starting to open its borders. Only Africa, despite its natural resources, has difficulties to find its own way; Has France something to win in isolating itself, in weakening the European project and in trying to go against such strong and globally shared trends ? This idea is absurd but the importance this issue has taken in French political life reveals the weaknesses of our society.
The first one, it is the fact that French people have a tendency to believe they are not responsible for the difficulties they are confronted with and that it is “the others fault”. It is easy because, obviously, globalization means “the others”. So, if there is unemployment, it is not their own fault, but the fault of the others countries, well, the fault of globalization. France is the first touristic destination in the world, which gives revenues to millions of persons, but some think it should be necessary to close our borders. Our country is the fifth biggest exporter in the world and that guarantees millions of jobs, but they believe it would not be dangerous if we exit from European Union and World Trade Organization. Is it necessary to remind that if we take into account the size of the population, regarding exports, French people are twice better than Japanese and four times better than American ? The denial of our responsibilities is not limited to foreign countries. One of the privileged targets is the political class which would have made mistakes for twenty, thirty and even forty years! But who did elect them: French people. Regarding these critics, they should entail some nuances. France is the fifth more important economy in the world and if we take wealth into account, households and enterprises assets, that could create some envy from a lot of developed countries, as our healthcare system and our infrastructures.
The assault is not limited to the political class and is also directed toward the elites. Our Nobel prizes, our Fields medals, our researchers and fellow academics the most prestigious universities around the world are eager to recruit do not deserve such a trial. So it remains banks and bankers. But, once more, even if in the past there were painful experiences, we think about Credit Lyonnais or Dexia, their difficulties were without any comparison with those which affected their American, British competitors, many of them being nationalized to avoid their bankruptcy, or even some ones inside the eurozone, in Italy, in Spain and even in Germany. To shift the blame to others is easy but it doesn’t resist to analysis and, especially, it prevents us to wake up to the real causes of our weaknesses.
The second reason lies in the fact that French people, as consumers, as savers or as company executives have not understood the new rules of the world where they are living. They too frequently take the wrong decisions and shift the responsibility of the problems they create through their behavior to “the others”. We can admit or criticize the fact that our social protection system relies on taxes based on wages. So, it is highly dependent of consumer choices. These ones, unlike their Swiss, Italian or German neighbors, don’t take into account the fact that the equilibrium, and at the end, the survival of their system, depends on them. They want to have the benefits of globalization with an always larger choice of products but without forcing themselves to a minimal discipline: to gain some hundreds euros, they risk a lot more, with the tax increases which will be necessary to make up the deficits, and even, in some cases, to lose their jobs. After what has just happened, is it possible to imagine that our fellox citizens will continue to buy Whirlpool products?
The same irresponsibility exists in companies which pressure their suppliers or which launch ruinous foreign acquisitions in increasing their debts and, some years later, announce loses and even sometimes fall under the control of foreign competitors. The list is long, from Orange to Vivendi Universal, from Lafarge to Alcatel and from Arcelor to Pechiney. The undisputable de-industrialization France has suffered for the last fifteen years and which has impacted our trade deficit is not the consequence of globalization. It results from strategic mistakes made by chief executives who have not understood, unlike their German competitors, the new rules of the global game. It is true that it is easy, in order to hide these failings, to blame “the others”, to explain that competitiveness has been affected by working costs and to ask for reforms which permit to transfer to the community the consequences of these mistakes or to denounce the “system”.
The daily expression of these behaviors, it is the permanent denigration which permits to hide the real causes of these difficulties in worsening them. Who is the salesman who will tell his products are too bad to attract new clients. Which company, in order to obtain new contracts, will explain that its technologies don’t produce the expected results or it will not be able to deliver its production on time. The success of declinist publications and the place they occupy in the media give to their authors the opportunity to get rich. But their readers or their listeners have not understood that it is in giving to them such an interest, they contribute to their own difficulties.
If the expression “cultural revolution” had not been used in the past, with the consequences we know, we should be tempted to say that it is what France needs today : to change the economic culture of our fellow citizens to make them to understand at last, that if there is unemployment, deficits and debts, it is not the others fault.