The Buy American and the Butterfly Effect

It seems that the Chaos Theory is being tested..

The greatest evangelists of open markets are now trying to change the rules, again, focusing on their benefits. In the 80’s Regan and Thatcher promoted globally that all countries should open their markets, go for the privatisation of their public companies and services, let financial markets work freely worldwide, and so on.

The argument and the theory was that with more openness the gap between the rich and the poor will be mitigated, that the overall commerce will increment and every one will gain, directly and indirectly.

They had the support from International Monetary Fund and from World Bank to enforce their will. All countries that needed money from IMF were forced to follow the neo-liberalism policy if they wanted to get the money.

And it resulted in the Mexico, Russia, Asian, Argentina and Brazil crises.

Now with “Buy American”, what is exactly the message that they are trying to pass?

Should it be: We were wrong for decades, sorry but our experiment didn’t work in your countries and now, as you will not be able to buy our stuff, we need to protect our markets from your stuff?

Or is it: Well, we are changing the rules again, as we did in the 70’s with the “Nixon Shock”, when the United States unilaterally terminated the convertibility of the dollars to gold?

Or is it: We forgot the recent history and the consequences of closing markets as it happened in the end of the 30’s, when the Hawkey-Smoot Tariff Act increased all taxes of the foreign products and worsened the global crisis?

Or is it a little more profound and they want to re-evaluate the Chaos Theory, and to see if a one sentence “Buy American” may cause a tornado on the other side of the world?

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Mario is a seasoned manager and entrepreneur with a broad technical background, coupled with multi-cultural experience and multi-lingual skills, co-founded two high tech start-ups, and now is developing a non-profit project to leverage globally the business development of small entrepreneurs.