By eliminating barriers to trade, the trend toward political convergence is making it easier for corporations to globalize. In 1957 the six major countries of Europe agreed to cooperate in the struggle for economic survival. Thirty years later the number of countries in the Common Market had doubled, and by 1992 the European community will be the largest market in the world under one economic policy and using one currency.
Japan has made similar efforts to close war wounds via economic, political, and cultural friendships with its former enemies in the Pacific Basin. China, too, is trading and doing business with almost everyone in the world, including its neighboring enemies. 1
Even the leaders of the USSR are attempting to lessen that country's isolation from the world through policies of perestroika and glasnost. Such policies are first steps toward full participation in the increasingly global economy.
The contemporary scene on the American continents is also marked by greater cooperative efforts both among the Latin American countries and between the United States and its northern and southern neighbors. 2 It thus appears that by the time the EEC becomes a true economic union in 1992, the Pacific Basin and the Americas will also have reached a level of economic cooperation unprecedented in human history.
- 838 reads
