Even free-trade economists endorsed MNC regulation guidelines in the late 1970s.

Evidence

It might appear surprising that an economist who has been one of the most eloquent and consistent defenders of the position that globalization and trade benefit the poor (Bhagwati 2005) could have endorsed what seems today to be a decidedly illiberal idea: the regulation of MNC activities in developing countries. Yet Bhagwati’s views were widely shared in the late 1970s; Many observers agreed that the increasing size and influence of multinationals warranted some kind of international guidelines to regulate their activity, and several argued that a carefully crafted instrument could benefit multinational corporations as much as the governments that hosted them (McCulloch 1977; Davidow and Chiles 1978). In fact, as early as 1970, two defenders of MNCs had called for the creation of an “agreement based on a limited set of universally accepted principles” (Goldberg and Kindleberger 1970, 323). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1780

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s wider study of how liberal internationalists legitimated multilateral governance systems before the neoliberal turn. — connects to: The UN abandoned MNC regulation in favor of corporate partnership within two decades — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1731