Whose responsibility is global integration?

Its everyone's, Khanna says.

Parag Khanna: Well it's everyone's, but remember that because it's everyone's, it happens all the time.
There is a great book, "The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy"; it shows that even for people at the absolute bottom of the global economy, the cotton growers and the textile workers, globalization is happening all the time, non stop, and great many lives depend on it.
So globalization now exists outside of any one of us, but all of us are doing something to support it, one way or the other. Everything we buy, everything we produce, everytime you make a phone call, all of that stuff, all of those activities attribute to globalization.
So it's not America's responsibility to keep global integration alive, nor is that China's, nor is it Europe's. It's everyone's and its all in everyone's interest to do so because of the money that comes in, exports that go out, the revenues that are gained.
The share of a country's GDP that depends on trade is growing. China is the highest in the world; it's something absolutely ridiculous, it is like maybe 75% of this GDP or something like that is dependent on external trade; because it has a high savings rate and low consumption.
And that same statistic is rising for other countries as well.
 
Recorded on: 3/3/2008

Parag Khanna: Well it's everyone's, but remember that because it's everyone's, it happens all the time.
There is a great book, "The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy"; it shows that even for people at the absolute bottom of the global economy, the cotton growers and the textile workers, globalization is happening all the time, non stop, and great many lives depend on it.
So globalization now exists outside of any one of us, but all of us are doing something to support it, one way or the other. Everything we buy, everything we produce, everytime you make a phone call, all of that stuff, all of those activities attribute to globalization.
So it's not America's responsibility to keep global integration alive, nor is that China's, nor is it Europe's. It's everyone's and its all in everyone's interest to do so because of the money that comes in, exports that go out, the revenues that are gained.
The share of a country's GDP that depends on trade is growing. China is the highest in the world; it's something absolutely ridiculous, it is like maybe 75% of this GDP or something like that is dependent on external trade; because it has a high savings rate and low consumption.
And that same statistic is rising for other countries as well.
 
Recorded on: 3/3/2008