Request for info on intra-company trade

[Sid Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>]

Hi, Erin. Intra-company transactions comprise a huge part of what is called
international trade. I'll forward your question to a list of leftie economists,
where someone will have the precise answer to your question.

On the larger issue, though, I think it's crucial to keep in mind that what
we're talking about with liberalized trade, FTA, NAFTA, etc. is not trade,
per se, but limitations that signatory countries can place on the terms and
conditions they impose on corporations functioning within their borders. In
other words, deregulation on a supranational level.

Cheers,

Sid

================================

Sid, it feels very schizonphrenic when I read about the international economy.
One article will talk about nations, how the economy of South Korea
affects the US, US exports and imports, etc. The next talks about global
corporations, international speculators, the MAI, versus all the rest of
us. These two ways of describing the global economy talk right over each
other; they're discussing the same things but you'd never guess it.

Do you have some articles that analyze this? Does my confusion make
sense? Is it just the biases of the authors, do some authors live in
denial of the transcendence of global capital and write about extinct
nation states? Asia's currency crisis is expected to increase the US's
trading deficit, slow down exports of auto parts, this was an example in
one article. But were those auto parts ever really being exported? Or was
GM just sending parts from one of its plants to another and calling it
"international trade"? Can you call it global trade when its within one
company? When we're discussing global trade, how much of it is really
trade, as in exports and imports, and how much is just within an industry
or company? I can never clarify this in my head, I can't seem to grasp
what's significant about a country's GNP or whatever -- is it really
measuring anything?

I've tried looking in economic textbooks for some clarification here but
I cant find anything. Have you got some writings that would help me
integrate this stuff? Anything you send would be great. Thanks! Erin