Page 159 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Liberalization and the Ascendancy of Trade 149

are pursuing communication policies aimed at attracting loans and
investments targeted at building their telecommunication infrastruc-
tures. It should be noted here that the institutional, technological and
political-economic developments presented in this study, all facilitat-
ing open-market international communications, are finding their apo-
gee in DBS applications. Through new GAIT-negotiated and WTO-
applied corporate rights and freedoms, and the use of DBS systems
both to establish almost instantaneous transnational information net-
works and to promote more general consumer demands, direct broad-
casting will be an increasingly significant vehicle advancing the
general aspirations of many TNCs. As Earl L. Jones, Jr, Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer of International Broadcast Systems Ltd,
explained to a Congressional subcommittee:

the privatization of European broadcasting [for example] opens up
new opportunities for American companies that advertise heavily
on television. These companies are looking for global markets,
and they need a global means through which to reach new
customers on a cost effective basis .... [T]he more that American
companies advertise abroad, the more of their products they will
sell abroad, thereby contributing in a very positive way to the US
balance of trade. 67

6.4 CONCLUSIONS

The disparate character of the American state has played a significant
role in the ascendancy of trade. It was not a coincidence that this
policy shift took place during a period of national economic crisis and
in a failed policy environment in which US free flow aspirations had
become both urgent and seemingly unobtainable.
The GAIT services and intellectual property rights agreements
have neutralized or modified those international institutions capable
of accommodating an organized resistance to US free flow aspira-
tions. Without well-defined and 'realistic' counter-proposals to a ser-
vices and intellectual property trade agreement, opposition to the
GATT (especially by the Group of Ten) appeared to many moderate
LDCs to be reactionary and self-serving, particularly given the col-
lapse of the NIEO and the NWICO, and the pressing need to pene-
trate Northern markets.