What are People Protesting at the G20 Summit?

Dorothy Howard
Jul 10, 2017 · 4 min read

By Dorothy Howard

Image: Leon Neal/Getty Images Europe

Trump’s “America first” protectionist doctrine in theory, guides his administration’s foreign policy agenda and negotiations. Yet Trump’s willingness to sign off on a global compromise on trade at the G20 summit in Hamburg reflects his more broad tendency to flip-flop and lie. Such willingness to sign the G20 trade agreement also shows how his protectionist doctrine is more of a cover-up for his anti-immigration agenda and attempt to win racist blue-collar voter support than a guiding principle of his global trade policy. Moreover, the global, corporate capitalism in which Trump takes part also reeks of globalization even when his outward rhetoric is pro-protectionist.

In Hamburg some 76,000 protesters rallied together against the G20 summit. The protests arguably continue in the tradition a trajectory of grassroots organizing against global capitalism, sometimes called the “global justice movement” (GJM) or “anti-globalization movement,” which include the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) protests and Occupy Wall Street. After Trump’s “America first” doctrine, the anti-globalization movement which the G20 protests represent, might reasonably be described as a broader movement which takes up both an anti-globalization and an anti-protectionist message at the same time, as the two issues are enmeshed and inseparable.

Trump’s Contradictory Messaging on Trade

At G20, Trump has compromised to support the consensus that trade policy can’t be decided upon by one country. Yet he sung a different tune during his campaign and threatened to pull out of the WTO, calling it “a disaster,” and to renegotiate NAFTA. Trump is simultaneously both pro-protectionism to his fans and pro-global trade in negotiations such as G20. Where does he really stand?it’s a reoccurring question we ask of Trump, always left unresolved due to his well-discussed upon tendency to flip flop and to lie.

Trump’s 2017 National Trade Policy Agenda lists as one of its main trade priorities to “defend U.S. national sovereignty over trade policy.” Worldwide, the rise of protectionism is synonymous with the rise of nationalism and racism against immigrant populations, linked to Brexit and the rise of far-right leaders like Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose National Front party promised to lock down France’s borders to limit immigration and block refugees from entering. Regardless, Trump’s hard-line protectionist rhetoric is a scam to recruit low-income Americans frustrated with the outsourcing of their jobs and with immigration when his deal-making on trade doesn’t follow this logic.

Market-driven corporate capitalism relies upon loopholes in the agreement which allows countries to evade their promises to global trade and to provide preferential treatment for corporations. Trump lauds his own close relationship with the corporate world in his appointment of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is a former CEO of Exxon Mobil, and Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs investment banker.

The Social Justice Movement Fights for a Third Way

Image: Hindustan Times

In Hamburg, protesters might be united in their opposition of the dealmaking at the G20 summit. But there are many more specific and subtle motivating factors which might differ among the protesters drawn there. Being anti-free trade is not synonymous with supporting protectionism. Both are fraught for different reasons. Still, we can understand protectionism and globalization/global trade agreements as two sides of the same coin, and which have influenced the protest.

The social justice movement, of which the G20 protest has been described as more aligned by what they stand in opposition to than the ways in shared solutions: some archist, some socialist, some democratic, etc. Instead, what draws protesters together is are common foes like the structure of dealmaking among global leaders which asymmetrically favors business over global welfare; the rise of nationalism and its bedmates racism and misogyny; and market-driven corporate capitalism.

G20 Protesters don’t need to agree on one critique or one solution to the range of issues they bring to the front to be successful. Sometimes the people that can criticize something and those who can present and implement a viable solution are often different. Yes, Occupy Wall Street was blasted for failing to propose solutions, but the effects of protest are sometimes not transferrable to policy solutions as much as they are to inciting critique and solidarity among the oppressed to respond and organize to power in their own ways. Going forward, the social justice movement advocates for a third waybut that third-way is still a subject of contention and contextual sensitivity to the many different people aligned against globalization and not protectionism/nationalism.*~

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