The Multinational Monitor

July/August 2004 - VOLUME 25 - NUMBERS 7 & 8

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THE LAWRENCE SUMMERS MEMORIAL AWARD*

The July/August Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue.

Donohue belligerently ventured into the territory that Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers N. Gregory Mankiwh had retreated from in February, following a brouhaha about his controversial comment that shipping jobs to low-cost countries is the "latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about" for centuries [see The Lawrence Summers Memorial Award, Multinational Monitor, January/February 2004].

Speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California, Donohue endorsed the idea of outsourcing, including of high-paid tech jobs. Such moves boost corporate profits, he said, and corporate savings will eventually be used to create new jobs.

Donahue acknowledged that outsourcing costs jobs for people in the United States. But he said that people affected by offshoring should "stop whining."

Source: Rachel Konrad, "Chamber of Commerce CEO Endorses Outsourcing," Associated Press, July 1, 2004.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?" wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.