I do not think Wal Mart is a good leader in the “business ethics” category.

Further, I find it hard to believe that anywhere near a majority of workers in foreign countries feel “empowered” by their Wal-Mart given positions.

Finally, I am reluctant to believe that if the labor forces in these impoverished foreign places could actually make free consumer choices they would be interested in producing or buying Wal-Mart products.

The Financial Times piece you mention in no way suggests that globalization does not aid “the poor in poor countries.” On the contrary, the article states:

[T]he gains [from globalization] have been split between capitalists, who have enjoyed higher returns; executives, whose emoluments go up with profits; and poor workers in the developing world, who have gained from the growth in jobs and rising wages that would once have gone to the west.

And later:

On the other hand, the gains are also flowing to the people who most need them: the poor workers of the developing world. While wages in the advanced countries are stagnant, wages in the developing world are rising rapidly, albeit from a small base. Freeman estimates that if Chinese wages double every decade, as they did in the 1990s, they will reach the levels found in the advanced countries today in about 30 years. Absorbing the labour forces of other countries could take a little longer but the transition could be complete in 40 to 50 years – at which point, presumably, western wages will start rising again and the balance between capital and labour will be restored.

The article claims that there are lots of middle class losers (a point I’d dispute), but it concedes that globalization is a boon to the poorest of the poor.

As for your second point — “If globalization creates wealth, that wealth should be taxed and sent to the world’s poor” — I’d offer two responses. First, globalization cannot create wealth absent exploitation of comparative advantage. You simply can’t “globalize” domestically and thereby create any wealth to redistribute (via taxes) to the foreign poor. Second, even if this taxing and redistribution scheme were possible, it would be less desirable. Sending folks food and medical aid comforts them but keeps them poor and powerless. Providing them with economic opportunities — jobs — can pull them out of poverty permanently. Isn’t the ethically superior thing to empower the poor, not just to comfort them in their distress?

It is simple supply and demand economics. Vastly increasing the labor supply drives down the price everywhere.

Second, an economic system that “taxes” [in the form of lower wages as a result of the decline n income as a result of government policy] the poorest in our society to transfer wealth to the poor elsewhere—your argument for globalization—is not the road to stable politics or a healthy community.

If globalization creates wealth, that wealth should be taxed and sent to the world’s poor, if you are so concerned about the ethics of all this.