The re-intensification of the globalisation of economic affairs – in the sense that spatial mobilization of production factors (mainly of capital), goods and services is accelerating – has been commonly assigned to various trends that appeared or strengthened considerably after the Second World War: the development of technology, resulting on the one hand in the diminishing of costs for overcoming spatial boundaries, in terms both of communication and transportation costs, contributing on the other to the deepening of differentiation of goods and services; the autonomization of financial capital and the intensification of its velocity of circulation cross-nationally; the institutional and organizational development with respect to the regulatory and legal integration.
All the above may be factors that enable economic globalization, yet they do not provide an explanatory basis for the re-intensification of cross-regional and cross-national mobility. Following the “orthodox” economic theory, globalization is “good”, being the natural outcome of socioeconomic evolution, the efficient result of an economic system, where the objective market forces utilize the opened opportunities: the cross-regional, -national division of labor according to the comparative advantages that creates substantial gains for world output, in terms of both, quantity and quality; the global scale effect that strengthen, among others, the potential of technological evolution; the convergence effect, as the mobilization of capital, technology diffusion and socioeconomic imitation are supposed to close cross-regional growth- and level- gaps.
On the other hand, heterodox approaches consider globalization as the necessary response of the capitalistic economy to the internal, systemically reappearing crises of over-production and over-accumulation of capital. Imperialistic expansion, evolving in geographical and sectoral sense, accompanied by the integration and the internationalization of financial markets inhibits the systemic downward trend of the capitalistic economy by providing new investment opportunities for the over-accumulated capital.
Three years after the end of the 2nd World War, following the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, 23 nations signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in Geneva on October 30 in 1947, “formally” and “regulatory” celebrating the post-modern globalization era. GATT lasted until the signature of the Uruguay Round Agreements by 123 nations in Marrakesh on April 14 in 1994, which established the World Trade Organization (WTO) on January 1 in 1995.
Along with the global developments, the evolvement of regional cross-national integrations like the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) co-determined the overall evolution. Think for instance of the removal of all legal and bureaucratic restrictions on the movement of agricultural products within the EU. Because of their common commercial policy, since 1995 the Member States of EU participated in GATT in an indirect way, as the European Commission was representing them in the negotiations.
The liberalization of trade, mainly through tariff barriers‟ reductions, continued with the negotiations of tariffs by WTO, which protects the rules of GATT and that of TRIPS (Trade of Intellectual Properties), carried out in the form of "Rounds". During the “Dillon” and the “Kennedy” Rounds tariffs were reduced by 50%. The “Tokyo Round”, lasting six years, achieved further tariff reduction by 1/3, completed in 8 stages. “Uruguay Round” took seven years covering a broader range of issues and member states. The negotiations included issues of agriculture and the textile trade, branches that could be characterized as traditionally advantageous for low-wage, developing economies.
The liberalization of industrial products was almost complete since there was a reduction of at least 33% of the duties imposed in the following areas: building materials, agricultural machinery, medical equipment, steel, beer, spirits, pharmaceuticals, paper, toys, furniture and textiles. The average level of tariffs imposed by the industrialized countries felt from 5% to around 3.5%. Indicatively, almost 40% of the European Union's industrial imports are now duty free. Today, the 9th Round is taking place, known as the “Round of Doha” and the negotiations on the liberalization of trade in services is still going on.
The liberalization of trade appeared jointly with the effects of unrestricted capital mobility, which was introduced in a similar manner, “formally”, by many international conventions and treaties, especially after the abolishment of capital controls in 1974 and 1979 by the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. This was a necessary step, following the needs for a global intensification of the velocity of capital‟s circulation, a pre-condition for the post-war credit expansion, the chosen systemic way-out of the crisis. The geometrically growing forms of new financial products confirm this, as well as the explosive over-accumulation of a self-reproducing financial capital that keeps on preferring financial speculation instead of the productive investment.
The European Union (EU) can be considered as the most illustrative example of an almost perfectly internationalized environment of post-modern, neoliberal, capitalistic character. Its historical evolution from its premature establishment (European Economic Community, EEC, in 1957) until its final configuration as European Union (EU) and the European Monetary Union (EMU) was pre-dominated by two economic principles: (a) the openness of markets and the “free trade / free mobility of resources”, not only within the EU but also with non-EU countries based upon various multilateral agreements and negotiations; (b) the “conservative” monetary integration justified as a necessity in order to confront the volatility of currency markets and the inflationary pressures induced by the Keynesian policies during the '60s, and the emergence of the energy crises in '73 and '79. A Monetary Union that is pre-dominated by the neoliberal orthodoxy and the substitution of the European democratic / social acquis by the militant technocracy.