Ich freue mich, dass wir heute unsere Veranstaltungsreihe Gegenbewegungen der Wirtschaft ihren Platz zuweisen, wie wir das nach der Oststerpause fortsetzen können. Sie haben wahrscheinlich, sonst wären Sie ja nicht hier, den Inhalt dieser Veranstaltungsreihe auch schon mitbekommen. Ich werde am Ende dann auch den nächsten Vortrag, der nächste Woche stattfinden, nochmal ankündigen. Beim ersten Termin haben wir einen Überblick über gegenwärtige Entwicklungsdynamiken, Probleme und Krisen kapitalistischer Marktgesellschaften ausgehend von Karl Polanis Analysen und Begriffe diskutiert. Dabei wurde nicht zuletzt herausgearbeitet, dass Natur bzw. die Ökologie, also bei Karl Polani Land, unter Bedingungen kapitalistischer Marktvergesellschaftung eben einerseits zunehmend an fiktivem Warencharakter erhält, ökonomisch immer umfangreicher angeeignet und vernutzt wird. Und andererseits eben werden auch die destruktiven Auswirkungen dieser Wirtschaftsweise, die auf Umweltausbeutung basiert, auch gleich auf die Natur verlagert. Diese Problematiken werden in der Klimakrise und ihren Zuspitzungen in den letzten Jahren sichtbar. Und die Frage, wie die ökologische Krise und die Globalisierungsdynamik zusammenhängen und ob und wie die gegenwärtige Wirtschaftsweise umgebaut werden kann, soll oder nicht soll, ist daher für diese Veranstaltungsreihe, die bei Karl Polanyi einen Ausgang nimmt und den Titel Gegenbewegungen hat ein zentrales Thema. Daher freue ich mich, dass wir diese Woche die Veranstaltungsreihe mit einem Vortrag von Richard Croswell-Wright, der sich mit dem Thema International Trade and Climate Justice auseinandersetzen wird, fortsetzen können. Der Vortrag wird sich vor allem konzentrieren auf die Frage Free Trade versus the Global New Deal, also mit dieser Frage auseinandersetzen. Rachel Kosow-Wright ist Direktor des Globalization Development Strategies Division der UNCTAD, also der United Nations Council of Trade and Development, der Konferenz der Vereinten Nationen für Handel und Entwicklung. Und für die UNCTAD gibt er den Trade and Development Report heraus. Er hat an der University of Cambridge in Großbritannien Ökonomie studiert, hat für die UNO in New York und Genf gearbeitet und zu einer Vielzahl ökonomischer Fragen auch international im Economic Journal, für das Review of Economic Policy referiert. Jüngst hat er das Buch herausgegeben, Southern-Led Development Finance Solutions from the Global South. Er wird nun seinen Vortrag ungefähr in 45 Minuten uns präsentieren und seine Überlegungen hier darlegen. Darauf folgt ein Kommentar von Karin Fischer, den ich Ihnen dann noch näher vorstellen möchte. and we'll translate the questions to Richard Corser-Wright. You can also ask in English, of course, but you will have the opportunity to ask questions in German and then Richard will answer to these questions. So I come to my end for this introduction and over the floor to Richard Corser-Wright. The floor is yours. Roland, thank you very much for the introduction. It's a great pleasure to be here as a great admirer of Karl Polanyi's work. It's a real pleasure to do this presentation. Let me share my screen to begin with, if I can. Yeah, I've changed the title a little bit from what was advertised. I'm going to call it Free Trade versus the Global Green New Deal. What I want to try and do for you this evening is to give you a sense of how we understand the broad parameters and dynamics of the global economy that we are currently functioning in. Why it's not working for too many places, too many people, and indeed ultimately the planet itself. places, too many people, and indeed ultimately the planet itself, and what kind of agenda, reform agenda, we need if we're going to deal with the kinds of stresses and inequities that this system has generated. Trade is part of the story, and I'm going to infuse trade into my presentation. We don't see trade as the heartbeat of the contemporary global economy. It's an important part of the global economy, but it really is not the heartbeat. That goes to the role of, in our view, of international finance as a much more potent and destructive force in the workings of the global economy. So we don't, I'm not going to get in for those who approach this from a more economic point of view, the debates about trade versus technology which is how a lot of the discussions are often constructed by economists. We have views on that, and I'm happy to discuss with people if they have questions, but it's not how I'm going to frame this discussion. And I'm going to avoid the thorny question largely of China, which often comes up in these discussions. Again, I'm happy to talk about China, but it's not going to figure in a very dominant way in what I have to say, although it is a very important piece in a larger story about understanding the dynamics of the contemporary global economy. We see the current era, and we've referred to it as an age of anxiety. It's a very hyper-globalized world. It's not the world or it's not the international division of labor that emerged at the end of the Second World War. It's a hyper-globalized world which is dominated by footloose capital of a very speculative nature often, which is compounded by concentrated corporate power. Large firms dominate the kind of markets that have emerged over the course of the last 30, 40 years. And it's very much animated by what people refer to as neoliberal policies, the drive for openness, liberalization, privatization, deregulation of economic activity. In that world, as we see it, the social contract that emerged at the end of the Second World War has been seriously frayed, if not altogether undermined, and working families everywhere, whether it's in Detroit or Dakar or Tokyo, working families are being squeezed. And in that world, anxiety has become a very prominent feature of people's lives, a sense of insecurity, uncertainty, the erosion of public services, the move from more formal labour contracts to much more informal and temporary labour. These have become features of economic life across the global economy. across the global economy. This kind of hyperglobalization is very much driven by unregulated finance and the surge in private credit creation that has characterized the deregulation of finance over the last 30-40 years and by a very fundamental shift from a model of capitalist development that focuses on wealth creation to a model that very much focuses on wealth extraction, what we have called and other people have called rent-seeking behavior. And of course that model of extraction, which has been applied to the economy and society, has readily extended, in our opinion, to the environment. The use of the environment, the commodification of the environment, and its pure use as an economic instrument has become central to this kind of model and it's taken the environment to the brink of crisis. So the age of anxiety is very much linked to this idea of an age of extraction and we very much feel that if we don't tackle the economic stresses and breakdown that we've been seeing over the last couple of decades and simultaneously deal with the environmental emergency, then we are very much facing an age of extinction, looking 20, 30 years ahead. That should be a motivation, I believe, for anybody worried about the rights of not only our generation, but future generations too. And of course, you know, we're all worried at the moment about COVID-19 and dealing with the immediate consequences of the pandemic, and rightly so, of course. But one of the things that COVID-19, I think, has done is to expose many of the underlying inequities and stresses and fragilities that have predated the crisis. Indeed, the world economy was in a very weak position at the end of 2019 before the pandemic hit us. And we've documented in the research that we have produced, particularly in our trade and development report, the extent to which this hyper-globalized world has been associated with growing inequality, growing insecurity, increased instability, heightened indebtedness, and I think perhaps most ironically of all, insufficient productive investment, because one of the kind of underlying ideological justifications for these highly deregulated market-oriented economies is that it would be good for investment. That's the kind of ultimate justification for the kind of neoliberal ideology. But ironically, when you look at the data in most parts of the world, what we call investment, that is capital formation, has actually been very stagnant over the course of the last two or three decades. By contrast, of course, financial investment has boomed. Investment in existing assets, investments in financial instruments of one kind or another have mushroomed in this world of hyperglobalization. And it's, of course, the world that broke down in 2008 as a consequence of the global financial crisis. And it's a real lesson for us, and it haunts a lot of the work that we are currently doing. People have forgotten that in 2009, in particular, there was a lot of talk about recovering better from the global financial crisis. The G20 that met in London in 2009 under Gordon Brown made all kinds of big promises that we would not go, it would not be business as usual, we would not go back to the world as it was before 2008. We needed to see major reforms of the international financial system to prevent a recurrence of the kind of breakdown that we saw in 2008. So much the same language that we hear today about recovering better or building back better was prevalent a decade ago. And, of course, we know that that didn't happen. The promises that were made in 2009 were not delivered on. Indeed, ultimately and quite quickly, once the financial system had been saved and large financial institutions, particularly large banks, had recovered their financial poise, then we saw the emergence of austerity and back to a very much a business as usual agenda. And we worry that that could be the fate of the global economy moving forward. And we've warned extensively about the threat of a lost decade and for those that followed the IMF meetings that took place in Washington or virtually in Washington last week, whilst there is a lot of optimism about the current actions of the US and the new US administration, there's a real underlying concern that we are facing what is often referred to as a K-shaped recovery, in which some parts and some people in the world of the economy will do well over the next few years, as some have done well during the pandemic. But for large parts of the global economy, and particularly for many developing countries, particularly for many developing countries, there are real serious dangers that the pandemic will be followed by a much more difficult economic environment and indeed one that worries us from a United Nations perspective in which it is impossible to deliver the sustainable development goals. So that's the broad picture. As I said, the hyperglobalized world is a world of predatory capital, footloose capital. It's not dominated by trade, but there is an important role for trade in this system. One of the features of the hyperglobalized world is that trade has become more prominent vehicle of integration into the global economy than was often the case in the decades immediately following the end of the Second World War. But it's a kind of irony that despite the fact they are trading much more, they are trading on a much narrower range of exports. They are hyper-specialized. They are still often dependent upon commodities for their exports. They have not been able to diversify their economies. And in the context of global value chains, which have become a predominant vehicle for extending international trade, they have often been stuck in a very narrow range of parts or activities within those chains and have found it very difficult to escape from and to upgrade within those chains and find themselves actually generating very little value added as a consequence of the activities in which they are stuck. So we have a very kind of odd situation where many developing countries have been trading more in this hyper-globalized world, but they've been earning less from that trade than they often did in a much more managed international trading system that was in place in the two or three decades at the end of the Second World War. It is, and this is again a justification that you often hear from proponents of the model that has emerged over the last few decades. It's defended as a rules-based system. And to some extent, that's a good thing. And we know that in free trade agreements, in bilateral investment treaties, in investor-state dispute systems, rules are very important. But there are a couple of things I think you need to ask about about the system the rules-based system that has emerged one of course is the basic question who makes the rules you know apartheid South Africa was a rules-based system being a rules-based system doesn't necessarily make it a good system it's always a question of who makes the rules and to whose advantage do they work. Also another kind of feature of the so-called rules-based system, often called the free trade system by its proponents, is that it's often not really about trade. Many of the components of free trade agreements or bilateral investment treaties are not about trade. They're about regulations, they're about intellectual property, they're about government procurement, which are not trade. I mean, they're often referred to as trade related, but everything in the world in one way or another is trade related. So we have this odd rules-based system that has emerged over the course of the last three decades, beginning particularly with the Uruguay round in the 1980s. But it's a system, a trading system that is dominated very heavily by very large firms. The dominant players counting for 50-60% of global trade are very large international corporations. Though these are firms that have dominated their own domestic markets, indeed have become increasingly dominant at home, monopolization has become a feature of domestic markets over the course of the last two or three decades and they have they have the same inclinations and impulses when they trade internationally so the lead firms in global value chains are these very large uh superstar firms uh that that dominate the international trading system and they they use a whole slew of mechanisms to organize those trade, those value chains that are not simply about trading, outsourcing, tax competition, tighter intellectual property rights, are features of the way in which these global value chains are organized and managed. And one of the features that we've emphasized a lot in our work is that as a consequence of the way in which these chains are organized, there has been a hollowing out of the manufacturing component of value chains and an augmentation of the ends of the chains in areas like finance and logistics and branding of one kind or another. And that kind of dualistic pattern to global value chains has very much worked to the benefit of the owners of corporations, headquartered by and large, but not exclusively, but by and large in advanced countries, and at the expense of producers. Again, this is this model in which we have a system of wealth creation that has become secondary to a model of wealth extraction. of wealth extraction. And that's reflected in a very simple metric in the surge of profitability of these top very large transnational corporations who dominate world trade. And a series of features have followed from that of which perhaps the most prominent is a very visible decline in the share of global income that is taken by labour. And a parallel of that, of course, is the significant increase in the share of global income that goes to capital and particularly to large firms. That has, as a consequence, exacerbated income inequality across large parts of the world, exacerbated income inequality across large parts of the world, forced many people who do not earn a sufficient wage to be able to cover social expenditures into a pattern of borrowing which has become a feature of households in many parts of the advanced of the advanced world and has weakened aggregate demand generally as the propensity to consume of those at the top of the income ladder is traditionally much weaker than those who earn a living from working and depend on wages. So you have these interconnected economic forces of growing inequality, increased indebtedness, interconnected economic forces of growing inequality, increased indebtedness and weak aggregate demand, which is compounded by the fact that despite the fact that profits have increased significantly as a consequence of these kinds of rules, the willingness of large firms to invest in new equipment, in buildings, in people has gone down significantly. I mean, a startling figure that is an indication of this is the fact that if you look at the distribution of profits of the top 500 firms on the S&P share index, over 90% of their profits are channeled into either buying back shares or distributing those profits as dividends. A tiny percentage of those profits remains to actually invest in productive activities. So these are the kinds of inequalities and inconsistencies and stresses that we see as a consequence of the rules of the game that have emerged around this hyper-globalized economy. feature that has become prominent in the news in recent days in particular has been the fact that not only have these firms been able to gouge very large profits within this system but they have a real predilection to hide those profits in low tax jurisdictions that is they have the means now in this hyper globalized world to hide these profits in tax havens of one kind or another that ensures that they don't pay taxes at the kind of growing inequality, the decline of government revenues necessary for public services, reinforces insecurity, weakens further aggregate demand, etc. So this is a real kind of vicious circle that we are seeing around the rules of the hyperglobalization game. And just to show some, just to give you some quickly some indication of the kind of figures and the this that lie behind this trajectory these are the figures for the uh the um rise of bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements that have become very much part of the rules of the blame of the rules of the game of hyperglobalization that have essentially surged since the late 1980s early 1990s not only in advanced economies but between advanced economies and developing countries and indeed within many developing between many developing economies themselves so this huge surge in these kinds of rules has been a feature of this hyper-globalized world. As I said, despite the name free trade agreements, most of them are not about trade. Most of them are about rules that essentially support the aims and interests of footloose capital. That's essentially what free trade agreements are. This is some figures again which I find quite remarkable on this financial black holes that are tax havens. This is the income of United States investments abroad for selected countries and if you read the figures correctly these firms claim to be making more money in Bermuda than they are in Germany, for example, which is clearly a slightly fictitious claim, but it's one that works for the interests of the corporations themselves because they're in this game, this shell game of hiding their profits as a way to escape appropriate taxation. Footnote here, of course, this is becoming an issue. Janet Yellen last week announced the fact that the United States, having resisted it for a long time, is now looking very seriously at how we can tax the profits of these very large corporations, because it has become so blatant that they are engaged in these nefarious practices that are working against the interests of the vast majority of in this case American voters which is what Janet Yellen is particularly worried about. These are a couple of figures that we quite like. The figure on the is it shows you the the this very dramatic relationship between the declining share of um income going to labor global income going to labor over the course of the last uh two or three decades this is the green line in the jaws of the crocodile uh the the orange line is the income the net income of the largest tnc so as that has as I said as that has exploded over the course of the last couple of decades the share of income going to to to to labor has shown a equally dramatic decline and and we see this as a very this as indicative of the kind of predatory behavior that lies behind much of 21st century capitalism. And the figure on the right-hand side here is, again, an indication of the anomaly between a world that promises a healthy investment climate and the reality that whilst this has certainly been a climate that has been good for financial assets and we measure this in terms of total external assets and liabilities the orange line in these charts capital formation has declined or been stagnant over most of the course of the era of what people refer to as neoliberalism so neoliberalism doesn't really do what it promises to do which is to to make the economy more dynamic by encouraging investment and entrepreneurship but it does lead to a world in which you can make spectacular returns from manipulating financial markets and related assets. And one of the features that is a major concern of the work that we do of course in UNCTAD is that behind this explosion of footloose capital has been the rise, the incessant rise of indebtedness both in developed and developing countries over this period an 18-fold increase as we say in this in the global debt stock since 1980 and and very importantly because a lot of people immediately think when you say that it's government debt no it's not government debt this the explosion of indebtedness over this period has been in the private sector not in the but i mean the public debt has has risen for the reasons i've said because of the squeezing of tax revenues uh of high wealth individuals and and corporations not paying their fair share but that has been significantly dwarfed by the the surge in private indebtedness over over this period so that those are some of the features as i tried to outline of what we see as this hyper globalized world uh with a with a with a important uh interaction between finance and trade and foreign direct investment as part of that that story there is of course and just as importantly in our opinion, a connection between the economics and the politics. That's partly manifest in the rise of neoliberal policies that I mentioned earlier. And a couple of quotes, I think, here kind of indicate the kind of politics of hyperglobalization in a very significant way, which is fundamentally the idea that governments no longer the decades following the end of the Second World War. The first quote is a very famous quote that kind of reflects this idea that hyperglobalization is a natural force that we simply should bend to. It's a famous quote by Tony Blair at a Labour Party conference in the UK in the early 2000s. The second one, which is more succinct, which is probably Blair was never succinct. succinct, which is probably Blair was never succinct. The second one is much more succinct and to the point. Thanks to globalization, policy decisions in the US have been largely replaced by global market forces. It hardly makes any difference who will be the next president, was the conclusion of Alan Greenspan when asked whether he would be voting for Barack Obama or McCain in the 2008 election. And it's this idea that somehow politics doesn't really matter anymore when it comes to economic forces and has lost any sort of potency to control it. That is a very, I think, very important ideological component of the hyper globalized world and of course our point that we we we endlessly make is that there's nothing natural or apolitical about the rules of the game that have been constructed by politicians often that that organize the way in which economic activity is developed in this world. And it's a set of what we would see as rigged rules, rigged in the favor of a very few people and firms that are designed to reinforce their positions of power and influence and provide little countervailing opportunities to change those rules but this is these are these are these this is by design not by some natural consequences of technology or openness or or whatever and and the term that we like to use and it's a term ironically from the Chicago economist Luigi Zingales is to refer to this kind of inter interplay of political decision making and economic rules as a kind of Medici vicious circle it's a it's not unlike 16th century Florence where the rules of 16th century Florence designed the rules of the game to reinforce their positions of economic and cultural power in Florence and elsewhere at that time. These are privatized governance structures that are backed by the state. And one of the best accounts of this, the emergence of this is by the American historian Quinn Slobodian, who wrote the book about the globalists, which many of you probably know, because it has its origins in the Austrian economic tradition of Hayek, and others coming out of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the end of the First World War. And I think Slobodian does an excellent job about showing the way in which these economic and political forces have become intertwined to create this hyper globalized world i think a very important feature that is increasingly apparent and and and is is adding to the stresses that we faced is it's a system that is seeing increased diminished trust in political institutions and politicians as a class. I think this is a feature that we see across the global economy as economists throw up their hands, as politicians throw up their hands and say look there's nothing we can do about the economic tensions and problems that emerge in this world. But as when required, backstop this system to ensure that those who benefit from these rules of the game do not lose out when crisis hits, I think has become a real source of anger and certainly of diminished trust in the way in which political forces are organized in the 21st century. And, you know, this is, I mean, this is a source of annoyance for us in an organization like UNCTAD where advanced economists endlessly lecture developing countries about good governance and corruption, whereas in fact at least as far as I'm concerned advanced economies have never been more corrupted or lacking in good governance at any point in the post-war era. This is an era in which corruption and bad governance have become endemic in the operations of many advanced economies. We're seeing it at the moment in the UK, both in the way in which the vaccine business has been held, has been organised, and now with the revelations about former prime minister David Cameron's attempts to lobby for dubious financial firms with friends in in in the cabinet so these are all part of this morbid symptoms that have produced people like Trump and Brexit and and others but these are not personal traits. These are systemic problems that lead to what Antonio Gramsci a long time ago called the morbid symptoms of an economic system. And I think that's very much what we're looking at in the current moment. And what kind of worries us, and I'll come back to it at the end of my presentation despite this despite all these morbid symptoms that to us look very apparent we still see advanced economies pushing the same kinds of reforms particularly in the context of the World Trade Organization which will become a big issue over the course of this year as WTO reform kicks in. And so, yeah, a lot of this I know is about trying to contain China, but the hypocrisy of that has become a very endemic feature, I think, of the way in which the free trade ideology has been used to push what is a highly skewed, unfair, and unstable set of economic rules of the game. We've been here before. This is one of my favorite quotes from John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. I'm sure I could have found a similar quote from Polanyi if I'd looked carefully enough. But this is one that is a famous quote from Keynes about a system that he saw then which had many of the same features that we see today that is not intelligent, not beautiful, not just, not virtuous, and certainly doesn't deliver the goods. And I think you can say the same thing for capitalism in the 21st century. As he points out, whilst people dislike and despise this system, there's a real perplexion about what we should do next given given these kinds of features of a of a morbid features of this system you would expect to see a much greater drive for for political change and and reform but that's that's still not really on the table so what i want to try and do is outline some of the ideas of change and reform that we think are necessary if we're going to recover back better and build a healthy global economy that can deliver on the kinds of aspirations and goals that one finds for example in the sustainable development goals and the agenda 2030 in the paris agreement um we're not alone in this uh the case for radical reforms is not only being made by uh you know people on the on the more on the left of the political this is this is the these are the views of the financial times it would seem too they have called for a reset of capitalism, and it has many of the ingredients that I think I would be happy to endorse, right? New policies to promote a green economic recovery, reversing the prevailing... And these are just direct quotes from the Financial Times. Reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades. Governments will have to accept the more active role in the economy. Parallels with the post-war Bretton Woods conference and the need to forge a new kind of international architecture to be able to handle the challenges that we face. So there is a growing sentiment, I think, that we do need to start doing things quite radically different from what we've seen over the course of the last three or four decades. We are quite happy to endorse the idea of a Green New Deal, of a way of thinking about how you deal with these inequities and stresses and crises, with obvious reference to the climate emergency, as a way of thinking about the collection of policies that need to be in place to deal with all those problems. At the heart of it, from our point of view, I I think is a massive investment push into the kind of public goods that have been neglected over the course of the last three or four decades under neoliberalism. It's what the World Bank calls from billions to trillions. We've done our own calculations that see a kind of investment drive in the order of two percent of global GDP per year into a different set of activities than has been the case in recent years if we're going to deal with the problems we face. And there's a set of very common, I think, standard policies that you find around the global Green New Deal, which are relevant, and certainly these are obviously relevant for advanced economies, but we think they are also relevant for many developing and emerging economies too. Different countries have different historical and immediate contexts that they have to adapt these policies to, but these are all the kind of ingredients of an alternative policy framework that is needed to deal with the problems that we face. Ending austerity. You can't solve the problems we face in a world of austerity. It's just not possible. And you need to break with austerity, shift to what we would see as a wage-led growth strategy with positive effects on aggregate demand. You need to increase public spending on a whole range of public goods and services, but with a particular focus obviously on the energy system, reducing energy intensity of production and consumption, but obviously changing the composition of energy production to renewables of one kind or another to hit a zero target in the requisite period. We need to see a return to progressive direct taxation. We need industrial policy because leaving private investment simply to do the job we don't think is appropriate. So you need all kinds of carrots and sticks to make sure that private investors who are a necessary part of this story will move in the right direction you need to uh re-regulate finance shift shift credit creation back into the public sector using public uh using development banks having a much more active central bank that is not simply fixated with inflationary pressures and having the necessary strategic planning institutions that can successfully coordinate the range of industrial macro trade policies that this kind of agenda implies. I mean I'm happy to go into the details of that but I think any green new deal wherever it's to be implemented is going to have these components as a necessary part of dealing with the economic crises and the environmental crises in a simultaneous way. There's a whole story that I don't want to really go into. Whenever you make these kinds of claims, people will immediately say, oh, this is unaffordable. We don't have the money for these kinds of programs and it's irresponsible. We've gone through the numbers as have lots of other people. This is not a problem about shortage of money. Whether you look at the wasted money from money being used for financial shenanigans of one kind or another, or the use of the subsidies that go into everything from fossil fuels to abusive agricultural practices to military spending. There's huge amounts of public resources already out there. There's a whole range of sources of financial resources that can be mobilized effectively to make the kinds of investments I think that we are talking about. So we don't really take that argument particularly seriously. What we do take very seriously, however, given where we're coming from, is the worry that many developing countries have that tackling the climate emergency will simply be another excuse by advanced economies to keep them down, that it will be a northern agenda that excludes the kind of development problems that they continue to face on a daily basis. And we worry about that. We've seen that happen before and the only way to overcome that I think is with an effective multilateral system that takes development policy and coordination very seriously and as seriously as the climate challenge. And the problem that we face in the work that we do, of course, is that the multilateral system isn't working and it isn't working for the reasons I've already said. It's become far too connected to narrow private interests and there is a significant lack of trust in its operations, particularly by developing countries. And we somehow need to deal with those weaknesses in the multilateral system, given the essential need to tackle both the economic and the climate problem from a cooperative and coordinated point of view. Now, some of the work that we do on this is simply trying to recover the good parts of the Bretton Woods system that emerged at the end of the Second World War, but have been abandoned over the course of the last 30 years. But that's not really enough because there were lots of problems with the Bretton Woods system itself, not least of which was it didn't handle development very well. And so what we've tried to argue is that what we do need is a global Green New Deal that takes the policy instruments that are required at the national level and thinks about the kind of international environment and system that can nurture and support those policies whether they're in advanced economies or middle-income countries or indeed in the least developed countries and we've tried to develop a set of principles that work that we've done with colleagues at Boston University, a set of kind of principles for what we call shared prosperity that need to underpin a more inclusive but also more effective multilateral system that can deliver on full and decent employment, that takes social justice seriously, that worries about the care economy and participatory politics, and of course has the notion of a sustainable future as upfront and central to its overall goals. And we've gone through the five principles. I don't need to read them, I don't think, here. But the five principles that we've outlined, we think are the kinds of principles that can restore trust and effectiveness in the multilateral system taking policy space seriously taking common but differentiated responsibilities uh seriously and uh designing global regulations uh with with uh with in a way that is not going to be captured by narrow or powerful interest groups. To us, they're kind of somewhat commonsensical principles, but I think we need to restate them very forcefully if we're going to create the kind of public multilateral institutions that can deliver on the goals that we're talking about. And putting those principles into practice, I think, does require serious reform of the multilateral system. It's not just about tinkering with the institutions that we already have, but it's really thinking hard about the effectiveness of institutions. And I'll say a little bit more about what that means in the trade and climate environment with respect to policy space in a second, because policy space is central to being able to deliver on the Green New Deal. One of the features, as I said, of the hyperglobalized world is the way in which it's cut down the space for governments in both developed and developing countries to be able to deliver on a more ambitious economic agenda. And so expanding policy space is critical to a healthy multilateral system. But that's only part of the reforms we need. As I said, also mentioned before, this ability of corporations to avoid paying taxes has become a very pernicious feature of the hyperglobalized world and the need for reform there is central. We've argued that you need a global competition authority to be able to implement that kind of reform. We need a much more rigorous approach to sovereign debt problems. The G20 has initiated something in response to the pandemic. It calls it the debt service suspension initiative and it's pitiful given the scale of the debt problem that developing countries face. It's essentially offered something in the order of $5 billion to 73 developing countries when we are looking at a debt wall that is over a trillion dollars in terms of the pressure on emerging economies. We need to have a dedicated institution that deals with debt restructuring as part of the international financial architecture. We can't rely on markets, we can't rely on the good behavior of financial institutions. We've also argued a need for a global climate bank and we've argued, again going back to parallels with the original multilateral system. We've argued for a green Marshall Plan, which makes technology transfer a kind of central component of any kind of effective multilateral system that is dedicated to building resilience in developing countries. And there's lots of ideas that we put forward about how you fund a green Marshall Plan on the scale that we think is required to tackle the problems that developing countries face. or the WTO, but we are arguing for systematic reforms of those institutions and the addition of new institutions where there are fairly obvious gaps in the management of global interdependent relationships. So that's the kind of reform agenda that we want to attach to the principles of inclusive multilateralism that we think are necessary to rebuild trust in the current system. In the specific case of the WTO, given that you did ask me to talk a little bit about international trade and the climate emergency, and I'll end with this slide. The WTO is in its own kind of crisis. I think for the reasons that I said, despite the fact that it now has an extensive membership of both developed and developing countries and despite that it's an organization based upon one country, one vote, the operations of the wto are skewed massively in favor of advanced economies and in particular select corporations within those economies and and that skewing of the of the operate of the of the operation practices of the WTO has already derailed the Doha development agenda, which was launched in 2001, in part as a reaction to what developing countries recognized as the limitations of the Uruguay Round that they'd all signed up to rather innocently, I think, without really understanding many of the rules that they were signing up to and they insisted on a development dimension to the next round of negotiations and it was convenient for advanced economies to agree to that in 2001 after the dot-com crisis, after the 9-11 disaster, they wanted a kind of notion of international solidarity so they signed up to the Doha development round but they were never, I don't think, they never negotiated in good faith ever around the question of trade and development and they've resorted since then to what are clearly neomacentalist type behaviors where they are essentially operating to maximize the benefit of their own corporations, whether that's digital corporations or analog corporations. And we've seen this with the pandemic, the refusal to waive TRIPS regulations to allow developing countries to produce vaccines is an indication of this mindset in most advanced economies. The only way in which you can deal with the problem is more liberalisation on medical goods. The demand that digital liberalisation and e-commerce regulations are introduced into a new round of discussions even though development has not been concluded the stopping of subsidies in areas of interest to developing countries because all of a sudden they're worried about China becoming a serious player in in activities that they believe are the are the sole right of advanced economists to be. All this kind of stuff is now becoming part of the agenda in Geneva. And it's going to fail. It's going to breed more distrust and disquiet and friction in the international trading system. So, you know, again, what we want to see as the basis for a new round of reform of the WTO is taking policy space seriously, taking special and differential treatment seriously, giving a stronger voice to developing countries in a systematic way. All these things we think are necessary because at the end of the day if we're going to address the client and this is the great challenge i think for everybody uh not just the south but if we're going to address the climate emergency we're going to have to find ways to combine that with industrial development in the south this is i think this is the single biggest challenge when it comes to the climate challenge because developing countries are not going to give up on their desire to catch up with advanced economies. That's not going to be removed from the table. And if you can't redistribute income on a massive scale, which is not going to happen, you have to be able to develop under your own auspices. And industrial development remains a necessary part of that agenda. So the big question is, how do we industrialize the south without destroying the environment? That's I think the central question and it's not really simply a trade question because it's all about finance and technological transfer as much as anything but there is certainly a trade dimension I think to this story that is going to figure significantly in the upcoming negotiations and I think we need to take it very seriously. We worry that it's going to be the advanced economies will push a market-based agenda it will be about tariffs and border taxes and other things and we don't think these kinds of price-based solutions offer the way of reconciling the interests of the south with the interests of the planet we just don't see that as being necessary and they run the very serious danger of locking developing countries into an international division of labor in which they feel trapped and which they will resist. So we need a different kind of trade and environmental agenda if we're going to move forward in the context of the international trading system and rebalance it in ways that do deliver on the sustainable development goals agenda. And we've offered some possible solutions in that direction about the need for a climate waiver on trade and investment rules the need to expand flexibilities in in in climate related goods etc so i think i think there is an alternative agenda out there but it has to understand that we cannot repeat the mistakes uh coming out of the 2008 global financial crisis and go back to a business as usual strategy which is part of the problem, not part of the solution to a highly unequal, unstable and increasingly destructive economic model. So let me leave it there. Roland, thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Just a sales pitch, sorry. I mean, there's a lot more detail behind this that if people are interested, they can find in our trade and development report or in the little piece I wrote on the principles for a new multilateralism with colleagues at Boston University. Sorry. Okay, so thank you very much Richard for this very insightful and encompassing overview over the developments and problems of rampant hyper-globalized capitalism and opening up some perspectives on how to tackle it via some insights into your work. So before we open the floor for und die Perspektiven auf die Frage, wie man sie umsetzen kann, mit einigen Insights in Ihrem Arbeit. Bevor wir die Flur auf die Diskussion öffnen, würde ich jetzt Karin Fischer für ein paar Kommentare an Ihren Papier überlegen. Karin Fischer arbeitet an der Johannes Kepler Universität, am Institut für Soziologie in der Abteilung für Soziologie mit den Schwerpunkten Innovation und Digitalisierung, wo sie den Arbeitsbereich Globale Soziologie und Entwicklungsforschung leitet. Sie beschäftigt sich mit transnationaler Klassenbildung, neoliberaler Transformation, Gegenbewegungen, ungleiche Entwicklungen historischer und transnationaler Perspektive, Entwicklungstheorien und Entwicklungspolitik, globale Güterketten. Sie hat eine Vielzahl von internationalen Forschungsaufenthalten absolviert, vor allem in Lateinamerika, jüngst aber auch in China. Publiziert international zu den genannten Forschungsbereichen, auch in Spanisch muss man erwähnen, weil das ja sonst immer nur Englisch ist, wenn international publiziert wird. die auch aus ihrer Arbeit hier einen Input liefern. Also in den jüngsten Publikationen gehört eben globale Warenketten und ungleiche Entwicklung, Arbeit, Kapital, Konsum, Natur, zusammen mit Cornelia Staritz und Christian Reiner und Magdalena Grantner zusammen, globale Ungleichheit über Zusammenhänge von Kolonialismus, Arbeitsverhältnis und Naturverbrauch. Beides erschienen im Mandlbaum Verlag. Karin, bitte den Kommentar. Dankeschön, thank you very much. In my commentary I would like to follow up on two statements of yours, Richard, and end with a question. Starting with your first statement, a central statement, who makes the rules and your demand for a serious reform and a rules-based system that is needed at the international level and the second statement is that neoliberalism wasn't is nothing natural when I thought about your work the Geneva consensus came into my mind and that you demand a new Geneva consensus Geneva because it's the home of the World Trade Organization. And you mentioned already the book. I have it with me. I had a look immediately when I had a look at your work. I read again the book from Quinn Slobodian about the globalists. And I think we should remember the Geneva School of Neoliberalism think we should remember the Geneva school of neoliberalism that emerged in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and people we don't know them by name do you know Ernst Ulrich Petersmann a disciple a student of Hayek or Jan Tumlier they were they came out of the league of Nations and were very much concerned to create an international order, a rules-based neoliberal international order. They were closely linked to the Freiburg school of neoliberalism, to Hayek and Röpke and all those order liberals. But contrary to the order liberals in Freiburg, they transposed the order liberal idea to the transnational level or the international level. It was very important to go beyond the nation state and to create something like, I don't know, order liberalism at a global scale. And there were critics of national sovereignty, national politics, because they could interfere, they could pursue interventionist politics. And so they thrive for a neoliberal order, world order, which requires, of course, an enforceable set of rules and laws. So I think this is important to have in mind. And that brings me to the second point that you also mentioned that neoliberalism was and is nothing natural, that it is always contested, that it is a process, that neoliberalization is a process that was anything but straightforward. The things you mentioned, the bilateral free trade treaties, dispute settlement in favor of transnational corporations and investment treaties and so on, that was not a consensus for decades after the Second World War. And the neoliberals I mentioned, Peters, Mandel, all those guys at the GATT, they entered the GATT in the 1940s. They were anything but happy with the post-war economic order, of course, which gave national governments broad room for maneuver in monetary policies, exchange rate adjustments. Most of the countries in the north and in the south had capital controls. So, they were anything but happy with that. And also the gut at that time, when I record that correctly, also the guts, the precursor of the World Trade Organization, their reports had strong imprints of Keynesian thinking. So that brings me to another point in history that the change or shifts in economic thinking, in policy, needs critical junctures. And I think that the 1970s of course we know that was a critical juncture it was the onset of neoliberal policies and the breakthrough of the neoliberals but I think the important thing here is and maybe we could think of the Polanian metaphor of movement and counter-movement that those neoliberals portrayed in this book, that they stood up against a strong movement of third world leaders and countries demanding a new economic world order. And they had quite powerful allies in northern countries, Keynesian economists, which were the orthodox economists at that yeah, well, the communist internationals, the social democrats in Europe and beyond. So there was a very strong movement in favor or demanding a just world economic order, economic decolonization, so to say. And I think those neoliberals, they stood up against these demands, gathered, organized themselves, and I think this was the formative period for neoliberals and ultimately made their breakthrough in the GATT agreements and in the Uruguay round and ending up with the WTO. You left out China, so I will leave out some factors that are crucial, of course, in this change or regulatory shift that we have seen in the 1970s. But I think it's important to have in mind that neoliberalism is contested, nothing straightforward, and that neoliberals, organized neoliberals working within institutions, that they had been the movement, the counter-movement against a strong movement demanding equal rights, demanding reparation for colonialism, demanding money for taking the resources out of their countries, etc. And that brings me to the end. As I said, neoliberalism is contested and so are the rules of the economic world order. As we know, the WTO has been riven with exceptions and ignored rules, I should add. So that shows that the clash of economic ideas is far from finished and that the world economy continues to be redefined. And this is my question to you, Richard. At the end, the third world leaders or governments had strong allies. if you think of the non-aligned movement, the group of 77 and a strong left movement and social democrats, etc. So where are your allies in your demand for a decarbonized, gendered, new global Keynesianism? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Karin. I would now give Richard the possibility to have a reaction, a short answer to this. I would ask you to keep it brief because time has already proceeded quite a lot and we would like to open the discussion for the wider public. Ich würde, während Richard jetzt eine erste Antwort auf Karin Fischers Fragen und Anmerkungen geben wird, das Publikum bitten, die Fragen, die sie haben, auf Deutsch oder auf Englisch in den Chat zu schreiben. Wir werden einige sammeln und dann in verschiedenen Fragen antworten und dann versuchen, das abzuarbeiten und in eine Diskussion zu kommen. Richard, du kannst mit deinen ersten Reaktionen zu Karins Fragen und Bemerkungen beginnen. Und wir haben bereits zwei Fragen im Chat. Danke Roland, danke Karin. Ich meine, es ist eine tolle Geschichte. Yeah, I mean, it's a great history. And, of course, we are central in that history. I mean, you know, Habela, who was one of the characters in that story that Slobodian told, was part of the GATT world and wrote a very important document in the late 50s about which was the first attempt by them to accommodate development issues which Prebysch reacted to rightly because it really didn't do what was required to to solve the kind of problems that do that so we we kind of we came out of that that that that discussion too UNCTAD was born out of that out of that discussion too. UNCTAD was born out of that discussion. So it is very close to our hearts. And of course, I believe the Geneva Consensus is a term from Polanyi. He uses the term Geneva Consensus in the Great Transformation to refer to the ideology that was prevalent in the League of Nations during the interwar period. So it's very much a Polanyi term, I think. So it's a very personal history from anyone coming from UNCTAD. I think there is an important point that you make. It's not just an ideological battle. This was a political battle. Neoliberalism didn't just emerge because Keynesians couldn't handle stagflation ideas in the 70s and they had better ideas. It required a lot of political force to shift the rules of the game in their favor. I mean, people associate that with Reagan and Thatcher, usually. But in fact, it predates that. I mean, Paul Volcker is a very, very important player in this story. And the use of the Federal Reserve to begin to change the game in favor of US finance is critical to understanding the evolution of the international economy over the course of the last four decades. I think the hiking of interest rates is not only a way to some extent to suppress the influence of organized labor in the United States, which it was. It was also, of course, the source of the debt crisis in the developing world and the undermining of a kind of state-centered model of development that had emerged in and around the discussions of a new international economic order. I mean, Volcker, even though he was not a neoliberal, I don't think Volker was a neoliberal in that traditional sense of the term, he's actually an incredibly important player when it comes to changing the direction of the US and the global economy. And that's another story about the role of the US and the global economy. And that's another story about the role of the US in the restructuring of the global economy in the late 1970s and early 90s, because it's pivotal, of course, and the rise of the dollar as untethered from any sort of constraint, which it was under the Bretton Woods system in various ways, is critical, I think, to understanding this story. And I guess it's maybe appropriate that John Williamson, who died last weekend, who was the guy who coined the term the Washington Consensus, was also part of this story. So I think Quinn's discussion of that history is very important, but there is a massive, there's a real story about political interests and force involved in understanding how the neoliberal shift takes place in the 1980s. So let me just leave it there. But I appreciate that very much. Okay, thank you for the first reaction. We have now four questions in the chat. I would propose to divide them in two as they seem to be related. There are two about the health crisis and two about ecological issues. I will start with the first and translate it as it is in German. It's by Paul Palkowitz. What do you say about the increase of money supply in the current health crisis? Will this increase the problem of private or corporate power? Or will the partial use of this money for social and infrastructural issues ease the problems you described in your presentation? And the second question also related to the COVID-19 crisis. It's in the chat and I will read it. It's by Stefan Hesutsky. I hope I pronounced the name correctly. Are the difficulties poorer in developing countries currently facing in regards to having inadequate access to COVID-19 vaccines, a symptom of enforcing intellectual property rights too strongly? And how can the global access to these vaccines be improved in this context as insufficient vaccination supply will only further prolong the pandemic? Why is there only little support of the WHO's COVAX initiative. Shall I start with those, Roland? Yeah. I mean, I think it's incredible. there's no doubt in response to this crisis and much more than was true in the global financial crisis that the role of central banks has become first of all central to the stability of the global economy that was part of the that was part of the shift that began with Volcker, actually, giving a much more prominent managerial role to central banks. Obviously, with the Fed in the lead begins with Volcker. The power of central bank balance sheets to manage shocks has morphed into an old story about the way in which central banks can support government spending. And so we have what was not true in previous crises. It wasn't true in the dot-com crisis and it wasn't true in the 2008 global financial crisis in which austerity was married with loose monetary policy as the combination to deal with the imbalances that had been caused by private investors. But you know what's coming out of this crisis is a at least in the United States and and and there's this i'm not sure that it's true of other parts of the advanced world but in the united states there's there's this kind of embrace of modern monetary theory in in some way that that does seem to have shifted the certainly has shifted the debate in the united states in in funny ways in which you get classic keynesians like um larry summers complaining about the excessive use of government spending uh and worrying about the inflationary consequences of that even though there are no signs of it anywhere um so so i do i do think i you there has been, there seems to have been a change of sentiment in this crisis as compared with previous crises. I think that the real challenge is whether that change of sentiment can move from a crisis mode to a restructuring mode. That is whether central bank balance sheets will be used not simply to respond to the shock of COVID-19 and the collapse that followed, but whether it will be used to fuel public investments in areas that we think are necessary to deal with particularly the climate emergency and shifting to both renewable energy sources, but also related public investments in transportation and changing the way in which we produce food, etc. So I think it opens up a really important discussion. I think it opens up a really important discussion. It's not an accident, I think, that some central bankers, of which I guess Carney is the most prominent, have begun to think about this in a way they weren't thinking about it a decade ago. And I guess it will be interesting. I think that will be part of the debate about whether we use the full instruments of the state to deal with the combined economic and climate challenges, or whether there is a strong pushback from finance who doesn't like this they they're already complaining about biden's infrastructure program that they've been left out of the picture that you know public private partnerships which has been the kind of jargon that has been used in the past to talk about infrastructure is not being talked about by biden biden is talking about public infrastructure projects funded with public money. And private finance doesn't like that because there's no money in it for them. So these are important changes that do seem to have taken place in response to the pandemic in the United States that offer some degree of hope, I think. What is less encouraging is the attitude of the Europeans because the Europeans still buy into the idea that you only use public money to kind of, as a sweetener, to attract private investment into delivering public goods. That's what the European Green Deal is about largely, for example. And so, you know, we haven't seen the shift, I don't think, in Europe that we have seen in the United States. And I think that's unfortunate because I think the U.S. model, to the extent that it is a model, is the right way to go. And I don't think the European model can deliver the kinds of investments at the scale required to deal seriously with the climate problem. So, you know, I'm kind of, I guess it's a glass half full, glass half empty. The problem for us though, because we deal with developing countries, most developing countries don't have the kind of institution, the central banks and the constraints that they face do not allow most developing countries to be able to finance large public investment schemes with public money. That's not an option for most developing countries. And therefore, the support from a properly funded multilateral financial system is critical for developing countries. And again, we worry a little bit, and including amongst modern monetary theorists, that they don't understand that the constraints facing many developing countries are very different from the constraints facing developed countries. So, I mean, I think there's reasons to be optimistic about that. I think there's less reasons to be optimistic about the whole vaccine question and the failure to treat a global health problem as a global health problem and the problem with COVAX I think health problem and the the problem with covax i think is that it's um i mean it's clearly underfunded first of all uh because it's treated it's almost treated as kind of charity by the advanced economies uh it's also a public private uh a ppp type model uh and and and it and and it's not going to deliver vaccinations on the scale that we need in the time required and part of that of course is because the vaccines are not available because advanced economies despite all their talk that we're all in this boat together and if we don't vaccinate everybody then it will come back and haunt us. They have advanced purchase agreements where they've cornered 75% of the market already. Canada has bought nine times the quantity of vaccine it needs to vaccinate its own population and that's true across many parts of the advanced economies. I mean, the COVAX, in that context, the COVAX system can't really deliver on the kind of scale that we're talking about, which is why we believe allowing developing countries and providing the necessary technological support to developing countries to produce the vaccine in place is a necessary part of any sort of global response to the vaccination challenge. And we find it shocking that the advanced economies, to a man or woman in the WTO, are blocking the initiative from India and South Africa, which is calling for a waiver of the TRIPS agreement as it applies to COVID-related patents. And that's clearly, again, going back to the, you know, which is why it's so discouraging, they are basically acting as conduits for the interests of pharmaceutical companies that are located in their countries. I think that's as simple as that, sadly. And again, you know, indicates the challenges, I think, facing the multilateral system in its current form. Thank you. Before I would like to move to the second round of questions, I would like to ask Karin if she wants to add something. No, I just want to repeat my question, Richard. Where are your allies? Okay, so we have the important and catch all questions where the allies for the Green New Deal and the second which is linked to that. Theresa asks, may I please ask your opinion on carbon tax and Stephanie Fritz asks, since degrowth was mentioned in the slides, would you share your views on that? I'm quite convinced that green growth will not be the ultimate solution, so it would be very interesting to hear your opinion on alternatives, new paradigms, new systems. Let me start with the issue of carbon tax, which, I mean, again, I think should be a necessary part of a broader package. I don't think one should be against carbon taxes, given the extent of the problem. I think any, and putting a price on carbon seems like a necessary part of of of um of finding a solution it's it's not it's just that it is not i think that our only concern is it becomes almost a panacea for a much wider problem that requires a much broader set of tools if we're going to address the problem in the kind of timeframe we're talking about. So I don't, I mean, I'm certainly not opposed to carbon taxes. Obviously there are serious distributional issues. We saw that in France two years ago with the yellow vests, when a badly designed carbon tax essentially led to a lot of political discontent and to some extent probably problematized the use of carbon taxes politically into the future. With any tax, there are always distributional questions that have to ask. Taxes can be designed in ways that are progressive or regressive. And given that we know that those most responsible for excessive use of carbon are the richest people on the planet. I mean, Oxfam and others have come up with figures that show that the top 10% of consumers are responsible for whatever, I can't remember the exact number, 50% of carbon emissions. So if you're going to use the tax, if you're going to use taxes, as I think you probably should, you have to make sure that they're progressive that they they they they they don't damage the the economically the people who are least responsible for the problem I think that's always the case with with with matters of tax taxation um on the degrowth did the degrowth question yeah it of all, it's politically unsellable. No one in the developing world is going to buy it. Nobody. sure most of the growth both output and population will take place in the developing world over the next 20 years growth will be biased in that direction you cannot build a narrative that goes against the that constituency in my opinion it will fail it'll simply fail first of all so there's a there's a very serious i think political question there second of all you know i in an investment driven strategy and to some extent ours is an investment driven strategy i you know if you're going to pump money into investment you're going to grow the economy i have a slightly crude economistic view of the world in which more investment leads to more growth. It's crude, but I think it's more or less true. And therefore, I think you have to accept that our strategy is expansionary. I just think I do genuinely believe that if we make the right investments, we can hit zero carbon in a requisite time. I would like to say, and I'm working with people who are working on a charter for countries to sign to commit to 1.5 degrees, because we know that the consequences of going above 1.5 degrees will damage the most our constituency. It will be people in the developing world that get hit the first. But if I was to be honest, I'm not convinced we're going to hit 1.5 degrees as the target, but we should keep to that. But I believe that a properly designed investment strategy with the kinds of supportive policies that I tried to outline earlier can keep the planet within a reasonably safe temperature range above pre-industrial levels and can do it whilst delivering what certainly our constituency wants which is higher incomes that's what that's what developing people want they want higher incomes and you can't have a higher incomes without either in the developing world without either having a massive redistribution of income from north to south which i'm sorry to say is not going to happen it's that's politically out of the question within the north so you're going to have to expand that's the only way you can deliver higher incomes in the south and and it's a real i'm not i don't want to underestimate the challenges or the potential contradictions but but i don't think the degrowth um narrative helps in that respect at least in terms of a discussion i have with with with the constituency um that we deal with most closely now in terms of allies i mean this is ultimately this is the big question it's not as i said i don't think it used to be about money, right? People would dismiss any sort of idea of grand schemes because it was unaffordable. I think that's not, it's interesting, people don't really talk about that anymore. So it really is the political question. Can we build the alliances that can backstop this kind of agenda politically in the time frame that we're talking about and um look it's it's easy to get pessimistic partly because i think ultimately you know despite what i said i think is true about the way in which you know the developing world itself if it grows in a certain way, will obviously contribute to the problem. If we don't get agreement between the US, Europe and China as the three largest emitters in the world, then this problem is not solvable. world then this problem is not solvable so so we you know it's that's where the that's where the political challenge i think ultimately lies really um and you know i i there and and i would i don't think we have i mean we have allies in china but not for but not necessarily for these reasons, unfortunately. The Chinese appreciate the fact that we still have a fairly traditional developmental view of the world, and that, to some extent, supports their view of the world. It's very incredibly easy to be pessimistic about the potential for alliances around a global Green New Deal. I know that. I guess the reasons for optimism, you know, at least so far, Biden has surprised. And in particular on climate. Now, how that translates into a proper agenda agenda because it's not a proper agenda yet. He doesn't have a proper agenda on this. But he's made the right noises. He's put serious people into positions. He's made climate a central part of his infrastructure agenda. And that's more than I thought. That's more than I expected from Biden when he was elected. I'll be honest with you. So I think there's reasons to be optimistic. China is, if China commits to this challenge, China will deliver on this challenge. challenge. China will deliver on this challenge. You know, obviously they've succeeded because they've adopted a carbon heavy growth path that is part of the problem, not part of the solution. That's clear, which is why China in absolute terms, but not in per capita terms, but in absolute terms is the world's largest emitter now, right? We know that. But they are in a position economically to make a radical shift. They've begun to do so. I mean, they're leaders in certain parts of the renewable energy agenda already, despite having a per capita income that is a fifth or more of that of the Europeans, for example. So my fear with China is that because of the opposition to China as an economic power from the West, that will undermine any or most hope of a cooperative agenda on the climate issue. I think that's the real fear, this endless kind of fear about the nefarious nature of China in the global economy, which we think is massively overdone, massively overdone, certainly compared with the behavior of advanced economies themselves. But that kind of narrative is undermining the notion of cooperation that is needed to address this problem. That's a worry. And the third worry is, or the third ambiguity is Europe, which of course is moving. I mean, they have a European Green Deal. So it's kind of at least, you know, in the same kind of narrative as ours. Ours is a new deal. Theirs is a deal. I think there are important differences in that language, that small language change. I guess my worry with the European approach is that I think it's still neoliberal, basically. I think it's still dependent on the kind of financialized system that we think is part of the problem, not part of the solution, and won't deliver, and is never going to deliver the kind of public investments that we think are central to the investment strategy that can solve the climate problem. So I guess of all three, ironically, because I think they like to sell themselves as the real champions here. I actually think the biggest problem is the Europeans right now. I'm sorry to say it as a European, but that's my kind of feeling. Okay, thank you. If there are no further questions in the chat, I would now like to come to the end of the discussion. First, I would like to ask Karin if she wants to add some additional things and then I would again give the floor to Richard for the final words for concluding remarks. But Karin, do you want to add a few things? Well, we're running out of time actually, but thank you very much, Richard, for your answer and running out of time actually but thank you very much Richard for your answer and I see it quite quite the same that Europe has the most constitutionalized neoliberal order we have worldwide and maybe Germany is a problem you mentioned Europe butany is the export champion of the world i mean i've just looked up the export share of the gdp china is at 11 or 13 percent and germany is up to 43 percent or so so big problem i'm with you okay thank you very much karen I would like once again hand over to Richard for some concluding thoughts. There was a question about, you know, about labor and deregulation. I mean, one thing I do take encouragement to as well is that organized labor has begun to embrace the Green New Deal story. And I think there's a real opportunity to, you know, if one of the, if the two great problems we face are inequality and climate breakdown, which is a fairly crude way of defining the kind of big universe of political, but inequality, we can solve inequality very easily, in my opinion. That is, what you need are strong trade unions and progressive taxation. I can guarantee any country that has those two will not be an unequal country in the way that we've seen inequality rise in the last 30 years. Now if you can marry that to a trade union movement that is much more embracing of the environmental challenge, which it wasn't when trade unions were strong in Europe in the 60s and 70s, then you've got an important constituency that has the necessary countervailing power to actually be able to force through changes. You know that there's a lot of ifs and buts and questions around that, but it is a combination that I think that needs to be nurtured by not only within the organised labour movement itself, but within a broader progressive agenda, both national and international, because I think that is a force that can still make the changes. I am encouraged that we work closely with the ITUC in Brussels and they've begun to embrace these ideas. There is an opportunity as well, I think, with organized labor as a necessary ally in in this kind of challenge so okay uh thank you very much i think this was not only an answer to a question but also a good final statement even though there were many ifs and buts and whatever but the perspective on combining trade union issues strong taxation and economic issues seems one way to move forward, I would say. Ich bedanke mich noch einmal herzlich bei allen Sprecherinnen und Sprechern für ihre Beiträge, also auch bei Karin Fischer natürlich und Richard Crossell-Wright, auch bei den Volkshochschulen dafür, dass sie diese Veranstaltung möglich machen. Auch bei Ihnen, die Sie so lange teilnehmen konnten für Ihr Interesse und die Fragen. Und möchte Sie darauf hinweisen, dass wir nächste Woche am 21.04., also am Mittwoch, die Veranstaltungsreihe fortsetzen mit Professor Andrew Kambas, der Professor für Regional Political Economy an der Adam Smith Business School in Glasgow ist, der zu The Return of the Public sprechen wird, ist, der zu der Return of the Public sprechen wird, wo es um die Frage eben geht, wie ein starker öffentlicher Sektor, eine gemeinwohlorientierte öffentliche Hand und Demokratie und Demokratisierungsfragen angesichts der gegenwärtigen und heute auch beschriebenen ökonomischen Tendenzen wieder gestärkt werden können, welche Perspektiven dafür existieren, welche Schwierigkeiten und Probleme dem entgegenstehen. Der Kommentar wird sein von Alexandra Strickner, die ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Wirtschaftsuniversität und eine der Sprecherinnen von Attac Österreich. Der Vortrag wird wieder auf Englisch abgehalten werden. Anmeldungen wie gehabt über die Veranstaltungsankündigungen an den Webseiten der Volkshochschulen und das Format wird so organisiert sein wie dieses Mal. Danke noch einmal an alle und ich wünsche Ihnen einen schönen Abend, eine gute Nacht und kommen Sie gut durch diese kalten Tage und hoffen wir auf den fröhlichen Tag. you