Corporate-led Globalization
America (ECLA) have shown that the outflow “…of profits from direct U.S. investments in Latin America has been five times greater in recent years than the infusion of new investments”: this is not to mention the fiscal drain resulting from various other international corporations operating in the region (Galeano 1997: 207). In other words, how could any country legitimately be expected to develop when its national industries have been monopolized by external economic forces and when the outflow of national wealth is exponentially higher than that which it is able to retain within its borders. The only logical outcome of this developmental approach is a system of cyclical debt slavery of which MDCs and the corporate enterprises based therein greatly benefit. In addition to these failures and perhaps standing as the most detrimental aspect of the IMFs model for development is the interstate competition for foreign investment fostered by SAPs. Again, by liberalizing a developing country’s protectionist policies against external economic entities and their entrance into national markets, structural adjustment mandates the free flow of trade and capital.Therefore, those who control large sums of capital, such as MNCs, are afforded the luxury of choosing where they wish to invest, or put another way, in which countries they wish to establish/relocate their corporate operations. This ability allows transnational corporations (capital controllers) to exercise an enormous degree of power over LDCs (Robbins 1999). For instance, the primary concern of a TNC is profit and finding the ideal business climate in which to pursue these profits; similarly, the primary concern for a developing nation under SAPs is to attract foreign investment. Given this reality, multinational corporations possess the ability to demand even further national deregulation within underdeveloped countries; concordantly, these demands trigger a chain reaction of interstate competition between LDCs, each trying to outdo the other in seducing the inflow of external finance (Robbins 1999). In this way, Latin American nations enter into a self-destructive process in which social, economic, environmental and political policy formation is systematically degraded in the name of debt amortization and an ever illusive form of development.Thus the primary
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