trade liberalization

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Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

This point is poignantly made by the British hit comedy film of 1997, The Full Monty, where six unemployed steel workers from Sheffield struggle to rebuild their lives as male strippers. There are clearly winners and losers involved in changing trade patterns, whether it is due to trade liberalization or to the rise of new, more productive foreign producers. Most free trade economists would accept that there are winners and losers from trade liberalization but argue that their existence cannot be an argument against trade liberalization. Trade liberalization brings overall gains. As the winners gain more than what is lost by the losers, the winners can make up all the latter’s losses and still have something left for themselves.

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During 2001–2005, Mexico’s growth performance has been miserable, with an annual growth rate of per capita income at 0.3% (or a paltry 1. 7% increase in total over five years).4 By contrast, during the ‘bad old days’ of ISI (1955–82), Mexico’s per capita income had grown much faster than during the NAFTA period – at an average of 3.1% per year.5 Mexico is a particularly striking example of the failure of premature wholesale trade liberalization, but there are other examples.6 In Ivory Coast, following tariff cuts of 40% in 1986, the chemical, textile, shoe and automobile industries virtually collapsed. Unemployment soared. In Zimbabwe, following trade liberalization in 1990, the unemployment rate jumped from 10% to 20%. It had been hoped that the capital and labour resources released from the enterprises that went bankrupt due to trade liberalization would be absorbed by new businesses. This simply did not happen on a sufficient scale.

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Because they lack tax collection capabilities and because tariffs are the easiest tax to collect, they rely heavily on tariffs (which sometimes account for over 50% of total government revenue).7 As a result, the fiscal adjustment that has had to be made following large-scale trade liberalization has been huge in many developing countries – even a recent IMF study shows that, in low-income countries that have limited abilities to collect other taxes, less than 30% of the revenue lost due to trade liberalization over the last 25 years has been made up by other taxes.8 Moreover, lower levels of business activity and higher unemployment resulting from trade liberalization have also reduced income tax revenue.When countries were already under considerable pressure from the IMF to reduce their budget deficits, falling revenue meant severe cuts in spending, often eating into vital areas like education, health and physical infrastructure, damaging long-term growth. It is perfectly possible that some degree of gradual trade liberalization may have been beneficial, and even necessary, for certain developing countries in the 1980s – India and China come to mind.

Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

This point is poignantly made by the British hit comedy film of 1997, The Full Monty, where six unemployed steel workers from Sheffield struggle to rebuild their lives as male strippers. There are clearly winners and losers involved in changing trade patterns, whether it is due to trade liberalization or to the rise of new, more productive foreign producers. Most free trade economists would accept that there are winners and losers from trade liberalization but argue that their existence cannot be an argument against trade liberalization. Trade liberalization brings overall gains. As the winners gain more than what is lost by the losers, the winners can make up all the latter’s losses and still have something left for themselves.

…

During 2001–2005, Mexico’s growth performance has been miserable, with an annual growth rate of per capita income at 0.3% (or a paltry 1.7% increase in total over five years).4 By contrast, during the ‘bad old days’ of ISI (1955–82), Mexico’s per capita income had grown much faster than during the NAFTA period – at an average of 3.1% per year.5 Mexico is a particularly striking example of the failure of premature wholesale trade liberalization, but there are other examples.6 In Ivory Coast, following tariff cuts of 40% in 1986, the chemical, textile, shoe and automobile industries virtually collapsed. Unemployment soared. In Zimbabwe, following trade liberalization in 1990, the unemployment rate jumped from 10% to 20%. It had been hoped that the capital and labour resources released from the enterprises that went bankrupt due to trade liberalization would be absorbed by new businesses. This simply did not happen on a sufficient scale.

…

Because they lack tax collection capabilities and because tariffs are the easiest tax to collect, they rely heavily on tariffs (which sometimes account for over 50% of total government revenue).7 As a result, the fiscal adjustment that has had to be made following large-scale trade liberalization has been huge in many developing countries – even a recent IMF study shows that, in low-income countries that have limited abilities to collect other taxes, less than 30% of the revenue lost due to trade liberalization over the last 25 years has been made up by other taxes.8 Moreover, lower levels of business activity and higher unemployment resulting from trade liberalization have also reduced income tax revenue. When countries were already under considerable pressure from the IMF to reduce their budget deficits, falling revenue meant severe cuts in spending, often eating into vital areas like education, health and physical infrastructure, damaging long-term growth. It is perfectly possible that some degree of gradual trade liberalization may have been beneficial, and even necessary, for certain developing countries in the 1980s – India and China come to mind.

Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jones Act, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, microcredit, moral hazard, negative emissions, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil rush, open borders, open economy, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, statistical model, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Unless the direction in which negotiations have been going in recent years is changed dramatically, more and more developing countries are likely to decide that no agreement is better than a bad one. But what are the prospects of a fairer trade regime? Trade liberalization has not lived up to its promise. But the basic logic of trade—its potential to make most, if not all, better off—remains. Trade is not a zero-sum game, in which those who win do so at the cost of others; it is, or least it can be, a positive-sum game, in which everyone can be a winner. If that potential is to be realized, first we must reject two of the long-standing premises of trade liberalization: that trade liberalization automatically leads to more trade and growth, and that growth will automatically “trickle down” to benefit all.

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While it has not been the disaster that its critics predicted, neither has it brought all the benefits that were claimed by its advocates. Advocates of trade liberalization believe it will bring unprecedented prosperity. They want developed countries to open themselves up to exports from developing countries, liberalize their markets, take away man-made barriers to the flows of goods and services, and let globalization work its wonders. But trade liberalization is also among the most controversial aspects of globalization; many see the alleged costs—lower wages, growing unemployment, loss of national soveignty—as outweighing the purported benefits of greater efficiency and increased growth.

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There is often a lack of infrastructure to bring their goods to market, and it may take years for the goods they produce to meet the standards demanded by the advanced industrial countries. These are among the reasons that when, in February 2001, Europe unilaterally opened up its markets to the poorest countries of the world, almost no new trade followed. To fulfill the promise that more trade will follow from trade liberalization, much else is required, as we shall see. Moreover, trade liberalization exposes countries to more risk, and developing countries (and their workers) are less prepared to bear that risk. Workers in the United States and Europe worry about being thrown out of their jobs as a result of a surge in imports. But workers in these countries have a strong safety net to fall back on: they have the education that makes it easier to move from one job to another; they often have bank accounts and receive severance pay to buffer their transition between jobs.

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy by Dani Rodrik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, full employment, George Akerlof, guest worker program, Hernando de Soto, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Multi Fibre Arrangement, night-watchman state, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, price stability, profit maximization, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, tulip mania, Washington Consensus, World Values Survey

An enlarged foreign worker presence clearly garners little enthusiasm in the United States or in Europe. In light of this, it would be easy to write such programs off as politically unrealistic. That would be a mistake. Trade liberalization has never had a huge amount of domestic political support either. Imports from developing countries create the same downward pressure on rich country wages as immigration. Yet that has not stopped policy makers from bringing trade barriers down. Trade liberalization succeeded through a combination of political leadership, lobbying by exporters and multinational enterprises, and the ideas of economists. Temporary migration, by contrast, has rarely had a well-defined constituency in the advanced countries.

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Many perceived the reform as a political and economic success in Britain. Economic commentators on the Continent pointed with awe to the large increase in Britain’s commerce and output since the repeal—although of course it was really the Industrial Revolution that deserved the bulk of the credit. Britain’s apparent success did not necessarily make trade liberalization easier in other countries. As the emperor Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte put it to the British MP and free trade proselytizer Richard Cobden, “I am charmed and flattered at the idea of performing a similar work in my country; but it is very difficult in France to make reforms; we make revolutions in France, not reforms.”2 However, there was one political expedient to which free trade–minded leaders have resorted ever since: reduce trade barriers in exchange for another country doing the same, and then present liberalization to the opposition as a necessary “concession” made to get the other party to open their markets.

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Most recent estimates put the “overall” gains to the United States from a global move to free trade in tenths of 1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.18 No doubt certain export interests would benefit considerably more; but the losses to others would be commensurately large as well. The more open an economy is, the worse the redistribution-to-efficiency ratio gets. The political and social-cost-benefit ratio of trade liberalization looks very different when tariffs are 5 percent instead of 50 percent. It is inherent in the economics of trade that going the last few steps to free trade will be particularly difficult because it generates lots of dislocation but little overall gain. There is nothing similarly self-exhausting in the case of technical progress.

India's Long Road by Vijay Joshi

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, blue-collar work, book value, Bretton Woods, business climate, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, congestion charging, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, financial intermediation, financial repression, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Induced demand, inflation targeting, invisible hand, land reform, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, moral hazard, obamacare, Pareto efficiency, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, school choice, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, special drawing rights, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, universal basic income, urban sprawl, vertical integration, working-age population

Worldwide experience confirms that trade openness is a crucial and necessary condition for rapid growth. Trade liberalization, especially for industrial goods, has been one of the signal achievements of India’s reform programme so far; and it has made a big difference. The economy has become much more open26 (though agriculture still remains highly protected, as in many other countries). Exposure to international competition has improved resource allocation and raised significantly the technological sophistication of the Indian economy. Further trade liberalization would be desirable. Whether this should be done unilaterally or as part of multilateral or regional agreements is a salient issue.

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India has run a large trade surplus in agricultural products for years; with the right policies, it would have many further significant opportunities in this area.56 Most farmers would gain from trade liberalization since they could more than recoup the loss of subsidies from the gain on higher product prices. However, two groups would be adversely affected. The first group is poor urban and rural consumers of food, including landless labourers, who would suffer, for a time, a loss of real income due to higher food prices. The second group is very small, self-​sufficient farmers, who consume what they produce and do not have a marketable surplus. This means that an essential accompaniment of agricultural trade liberalization is a functioning system of income support for poor people (as strongly advocated in Chapter 10).

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Sukhtankar, S. (2015), ‘The Impact of Corruption on Consumer Markets: Evidence from the Allocation of 2G Wireless Spectrum in India’, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 58(1), 75–​108. Sukhtankar, S., and M. Vaishnav (2015), ‘Corruption in India: Bridging Research Evidence and Policy Options’, India Policy Forum 2014/​15, Vol. 10, 193–​276. Topalova, P. (2007), ‘Trade Liberalization, Poverty and Inequality: Evidence from Indian Districts’, in A. Harrison (ed.), 291–​336, Globalization and Poverty, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Topalova, P., and A. Khandelwal (2011), ‘Trade Liberalization and Firm Productivity: The Case of India’, Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 93(3), 995–​1009. [ 334 ] References 335 Triffin, R. (1960), Gold and Dollar Crisis: The Future of Convertibility, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems by Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo

3D printing, accelerated depreciation, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, business cycle, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, charter city, company town, congestion pricing, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental economics, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, fear of failure, financial innovation, flying shuttle, gentrification, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, high net worth, immigration reform, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, industrial cluster, industrial robot, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, loss aversion, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, middle-income trap, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, non-tariff barriers, obamacare, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open economy, Paul Samuelson, place-making, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, restrictive zoning, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart meter, social graph, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, systematic bias, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Twitter Arab Spring, universal basic income, urban sprawl, very high income, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y2K

There was also a more nebulous but perhaps equally important shift in the attitude of the bureaucracy and the political system toward the business sector: the idea that business was a legitimate pursuit of honest people, something that could even be “cool.” It is essentially impossible to separate the effects of all these changes from that of trade liberalization. Third, it is hard to know what in the data constitutes trade liberalization. When the tariffs are 350 percent, there are no imports, so cutting them quite a bit might change very little. How do we distinguish relevant policy changes from irrelevant posturing? Moreover, such sky-high taxes invited defiance; people found creative ways to get around them.

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(New York: Penguin Classics, 1977). 11 Petia Topalova, “Factor Immobility and Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Evidence on Poverty from India,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2, no. 4 (2010): 1–41, DOI: 10.1257/app.2.4.1. 12 “GDP Growth (annual %),” World Bank, accessed March 29, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.kd.zg?end=2017&start=1988. 13 Of course, the trade optimists, among them Jagdish Bhagwati, T. N. Srinivasan, and their followers make the argument that pre-1991 growth was about to grind to a halt and the bailout and trade liberalization saved it. 14 Tractatus 7, in Ludwig von Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, originally published by Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 1921.

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American Economic Review 103, no. 5 (2013): 1960–76. 24 Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Amit Khandelwal, Nina Pavcnik, and Petia Topalova, “Trade Liberalization and New Imported Inputs,” American Economic Review 99, no. 2 (2009): 494–500. 25 Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, “Globalization and All That,” in Understanding Poverty, ed. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 26 Topalova, “Factor Immobility and Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization.” 27 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “Growth Theory Through the Lens of Development Economics,” ch. 7, in The Handbook of Economic Growth, eds.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier

air freight, Asian financial crisis, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, British Empire, business cycle, Doha Development Round, export processing zone, failed state, falling living standards, Global Witness, income inequality, mass immigration, out of africa, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization, zero-sum game

If a big increase in aid ruins export competitiveness, then inadvertently it accentuates the very problem that the bottom-billion countries need to put right—making new export activities competitive. Fortunately, trade liberalization is one of the remedies for Dutch disease. Extra aid increases the supply of imports, and so a matching increase in the demand for imports is needed. Only with a matching increase in demand are exporters not disadvantaged by the extra aid. Trade liberalization increases the demand for imports by making them cheaper without the need to appreciate the exchange rate: the taxes imposed on imports are reduced. How much trade liberalization is needed? That depends upon what the aid is used for. If the aid is used to buy foreign expertise, it directly increases the need for foreign exchange, as foreign experts are paid in dollars.

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But if the aid is used to pay for local schoolteachers, then it has little direct effect on the need for foreign exchange, as schoolteachers are paid in local currency and probably don’t spend much of their salary on imports. So the sort of social uses that NGOs tend to favor generally require more trade liberalization than the growth-oriented uses such as expertise and infrastructure. Christian Aid should be campaigning for African trade liberalization alongside extra aid. I do not know whether the advocacy people in Christian Aid simply have not understood this connection between aid and trade policy. It is not Christian Aid’s fault if trade liberalization doesn’t sell T-shirts as well as depictions of capitalist pigs do, but profiting from popular misconceptions is their fault.

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Gradually, over the past two decades governments have been coaxed and cajoled into reducing trade barriers. Inevitably, when exposed to external competition these unviable activities curl up and die. I am not, however, an enthusiast for “big bang” trade liberalization: where there is some hope that firms can become globally competitive it may be better to draw their feet gradually closer to the fire than to push them into sudden death. Trade liberalization has got parasitic firms off the backs of ordinary people, but it has not enabled other activities to flourish. For that governments need to change a whole range of policies that between them determine firms’ costs.

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization by Richard Baldwin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, buy low sell high, call centre, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, commodity super cycle, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, domestication of the camel, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, financial intermediation, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Henri Poincaré, imperial preference, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invention of the telegraph, investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, low skilled workers, market fragmentation, mass immigration, Metcalfe’s law, New Economic Geography, out of africa, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, Pax Mongolica, profit motive, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, Skype, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telerobotics, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus

Apart from changing the name, the deal institutionalized the GATT’s judicial role in dispute settlement and added some basic “rules of road” for international investment, regulations, intellectual property, and services. DATA SOURCE: Will Martin and Patrick Messerlin, “Why Is It So Difficult? Trade Liberalization Under the Doha Agenda,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 23, no. 3 (2007): 347–366. Specifically, three liberalization initiatives were launched in 1986. The United States and Canada started talks on a free trade agreement that finished in 1989 (this eventually turned into the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA). The year 1986 also saw the Europeans both deepen and widen their trade liberalization club, which was by then called the European Union (EU). Spain and Portugal were admitted as new members, and the EU embarked on a deep liberalization of many other economic barriers in the context of the so-called Single Market program.

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Note that the sum of A7 plus G7 shares remains at approximately 80 percent throughout all three acts. DATA SOURCE: Maddison database (2009 version). Act III: 1946 to 1990. The “resolution” comes in Act III when the trade-cost hero regains her aplomb and triumphs over adversity. For forty years, trade costs are reduced by trade liberalization and transportation innovations. The unbundling of production and consumption advances as never before. This three-act structure is not just an organizational convenience—it is obvious in data, as Figure 16 shows. The technological breakthrough that started this reversal was the steam revolution.

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Hitler knew he needed goods made outside of Germany, but his solution was to turn international trade into domestic trade by expanding the borders of the Third Reich from the Atlantic to Moscow and from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea.7 This was the darkest period for trade in modern times—the period when the association between protectionism and really bad things first took hold in policymakers’ minds. Dawn, however, was on the way. Act III: Post–World War II Unbundling The history of post–World War II trade liberalization begins before itself, as so often happens with historical narratives. Regretting the burst of protectionism it sparked in the late 1920s, the United States Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. This flipped the United States from a unilateral tariff setter to a reciprocal tariff cutter.

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, antiwork, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, discovery of the americas, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, liberation theology, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, post-industrial society, precariat, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, search costs, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey

HOS can present such a positive view of trade liberalization because it assumes that all capital and labour are the same (‘homogeneous’ is the technical term) and thus can be readily redeployed in any activity (technically this is known as the assumption of perfect factor mobility).4 Even the use of the compensation principle cannot quite hide the fact that a lot of people get hurt by trade liberalization Even when they acknowledge that trade liberalization may produce losers, free-trade economists justify trade liberalization by invoking the ‘compensation principle’ (see Chapter 4). They argue that, as trade liberalization makes the whole country better off, the losers from the process can be fully compensated and the winners still have additional income left.

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In Sub-Saharan Africa, the share has fallen from 17–18 per cent during the 1970s and much of the 1980s to 12 per cent today.15 This premature deindustrialization is largely the result of neo-liberal economic policies implemented in these countries since the 1980s (see Chapter 3).16 Sudden trade liberalization has destroyed swathes of manufacturing industries in those countries. Financial liberalization has allowed banks to redirect their loans to (more lucrative) consumers, away from producers. Policies geared towards inflation control, such as high interest rates and over-valued currencies, have added to the agony of manufacturing firms by making loans expensive and exports more difficult.

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International trade benefits every country involved. The logic behind the theory of comparative advantage is impeccable – given its assumptions Since Ricardo invented it in the early nineteenth century, the theory of comparative advantage has provided a powerful argument in favour of free trade and trade liberalization, that is, reduction in government restrictions on trade. The logic is impeccable – that is, insofar as we accept its underlying assumptions. Once we question those assumptions, its validity becomes much more limited. Let me explain this, focusing on two key assumptions behind the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson version of the theory of comparative advantage (henceforth HOS), which we first encountered in Chapter 4 as lying at the heart of the modern argument for free trade.2 HOS structurally rules out the most important form of beneficial protectionism by assuming that all countries are equally capable The most important assumption underlying HOS is that all countries have equal productive capabilities – that is, they can use any technology they want.3 According to this assumption, the only reason why a country might specialize in one product rather than another is because that product happens to be produced using a technology that is in line with its relative factor endowment – that is, how much capital and labour it has.

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, deindustrialization, discovery of DNA, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, mini-job, moral hazard, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paris climate accords, patent troll, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, zero-sum game

The presumption that free trade is welfare-enhancing is simply less true than had been realized. Examining the effects of trade liberalization in an economy that was based on the notion of perfect markets provided less insight into the world as it exists than advocates of globalization had assumed. In short, a limited and well-structured agenda of trade liberalization can enhance societal well-being, but it will do so only if the government takes an active role in ensuring that the benefits of globalization are equitably shared. But many of the same advocates of trade liberalization sought to scale back government, limiting its ability to do what had to be done to make sure that globalization would benefit most of society.

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The advanced countries, including those of the EU, fell prey to this version of globalization, in large part because of a belief that if the national pie were larger, everyone would be better off. It has long been known that trade liberalization carries the risk of creating distinct groups of winners and losers, and over the last few decades, economists have further developed theories and compiled evidence to fortify this view. Markets for risk (insurance markets) are almost always imperfect, so individuals cannot buy insurance to guard against the most important risks they face, such as job loss. Moreover, trade liberalization often confronts firms with new risks, again against which they cannot buy insurance. Capital markets are also imperfect, so that new enterprises that seek to take advantage of new export opportunities that have opened up as a result of a trade agreement often cannot get the capital they need.

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Although problems would remain—the GMO example tells us that—they would be small and isolated. But if differences in underlying economic, political, and social models persist, as appears to be the case, how will the global economic system be able to work? The principle that trade is desirable is still valid, though not necessarily the kind of trade liberalization that was imagined a quarter century ago when the WTO began. The world will have to work toward a set of fewer rules, with more discretion, than if all countries subscribed to the same economic and value system. Europe will have to take the lead in forging these new rules. China, it seems, is also attempting to create or expand rifts within the EU.

The European Union by John Pinder, Simon Usherwood

Berlin Wall, BRICs, central bank independence, centre right, collective bargaining, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, failed state, illegal immigration, labour market flexibility, mass immigration, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, new economy, non-tariff barriers, open borders, price stability, trade liberalization, zero-sum game

Wielding the common instrument of the external tariff, the Community was becoming, in the field of trade, a power comparable to the United States. President Kennedy had reacted by proposing multilateral negotiations for major tariff cuts. Skilfully led by the Commission, the Community responded positively; and the outcome was cuts averaging one-third, initiating an era in which it was to become the major force for international trade liberalization. Alongside the ups and downs of Community politics, the Court of Justice made steady progress in establishing the rule of law. Based on its treaty obligation to ensure that ‘the law is observed’, in judgments in 1963 and 1964 the Court established the principles of the primacy and the direct effect of Community law, so that it would be consistently applied in all the member states.

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As a federalist in Monnet’s tradition, his short-list contained projects—single market, single currency, common defence policy, institutional reform—that could be seen as steps in a federal direction. But Thatcher, whose view of federalism was akin to de Gaulle’s, and so was hostile to the currency, defence, and institutional projects, was at the same time a militant economic liberal who saw the single market as an important measure of trade liberalization. European economies had lost momentum during the hard times of the 1970s and all the governments accepted the single market project as a way to break out of what was then called eurosclerosis. The project was strongly backed by the more dynamic firms and the main business associations, especially since the Luxembourg ‘compromise’ had served to let non-tariff barriers to trade build up during the period.

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By the end of the 1990s, moreover, the twin pressures of enlargement to the East and negotiations in the newly established World Trade Organization (WTO) were forcing the EU into a more structural reform process. New member states, with their large agricultural sectors, were set to drive up costs very significantly, while the need to secure agreement in WTO trade liberalization negotiations was placing increasing pressure on reductions in levels of agricultural support. Consequently, the Union agreed substantial cuts for some products in 1999, as part of wider budgetary negotiations, as well as introducing the notion of a multifunctional CAP, i.e. one that extends into the social and environmental dimensions that surround farming.

The Making of Global Capitalism by Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, book value, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, continuous integration, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, dark matter, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, guest worker program, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, oil shock, precariat, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, vertical integration, very high income, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

In addition to becoming “the primary coordinator of US trade liberalization efforts” inside the American state, the USTR became—especially through thirty-one advisory committees with over 700 members from every industrial and agricultural sector, serving two-year terms—“the principle vehicle for translating capitalist interests into coherent trade policy positions.”7 But no less crucial for the “fast track” passage of trade legislation, and for anticipating and deflecting Congressional opposition despite considerable economic dislocation and rising unemployment, was the increasing juridification of the way domestic political problems arising from trade liberalization were handled. As Chorev has shown, the changes made under the 1974 Trade Act to expedite appeals for “adjustment assistance” for workers and firms affected by increased imports was indicative of “the willingness of the American government to take on itself the cost of trade liberalization rather than imposing it on others”—while the new quasi-judicial procedures established for anti-dumping measures and countervailing duties were designed to “restructure protectionist measures in a way that would limit their negative effects.”

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Not only was it, as Clayton’s biographer put it, “the most sweeping trade agreement—in terms of tariff reduction and the number of goods and countries involved—in the history of the industrial world”;19it also allowed for flexibility in both bilateral and multilateral negotiations, where “the procedures of negotiation preserved the political advantage of the rich countries and permitted American dominance.”20As a commercial trade agreement not encumbered by the proposed charter for the ITO, the GATT set out long-term liberalizing goals, and set ground rules for non-discriminatory treatment of national and international investors while leaving ample scope for the type of temporary trade restrictions that were agreed with the British in the summer of 1947.21 US trade policy, which would henceforth no longer go under the name of the Open Door, remained primarily “shaped by domestic influences” rather than an “embedded” international regime.22But those influences were themselves increasingly structured by the way the American state had been internationalized and the responsibility it took upon itself for developing capitalism on a global scale after World War II. In the postwar period, the institutional restructuring introduced in the 1934 Trade Act was rendered much more significant than it could have been during the Depression, as successive administrations pursued “a general process of trade liberalization with only exceptional treatment to ‘special’ cases” (which were left to the play of “industry-specific pressures” in Congress).23And now that it was recognized, even in the State Department, that accumulation at home was only marginally dependent on exports, trade strategy was determined above all by the commitment to ensuring that what Truman called “the future pattern of economic relations” internationally would be conducive to the expansion of “free enterprise” in ways that would eventually allow for the free movement of capital.

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The cost to the US economy of the Volcker shock’s renewal of confidence in the dollar was not only that the strong dollar pulled in imports, but also that it made US exports—which had grown at 8 percent annually in the 1970s (almost as fast as Japan’s)—more expensive. The growth of US exports fell to 2 percent annually from 1980 to 1985, and in conjunction with the impact of Japan’s export success on US manufacturing jobs this produced a protectionist backlash that threatened the trajectory towards trade liberalization that had been so central to the making of global capitalism since World War II. The growth of Japanese small car exports to the US, while 200,000 workers were laid off by GM, Ford, and Chrysler, produced the Congressional pressures that led the Reagan administration in 1981 to negotiate “voluntary export restraints” that effectively set quotas on the number of cars Japan could export to the US each year.

In Defense of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg

anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, capital controls, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Glaeser, export processing zone, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Naomi Klein, new economy, open economy, prediction markets, profit motive, race to the bottom, rising living standards, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, zero-sum game

‘‘The goal of this revolution,’’ according to Gray, ‘‘was to insulate neo-liberal policy irreversibly from democratic accountability in political life.’’4 Some pundits—among them Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, and economist Joseph Stiglitz—even characterize free-market advocacy as a kind of quasireligious cult, which they call ‘‘market fundamentalism.’’ Deregulation, privatization, and trade liberalization, however, were not invented by ultra-liberal ideologues. True, there were political leaders—Reagan and Thatcher, for instance—who had been inspired by economic liberalism. But the biggest reformers were communists in China and the Soviet Union, protectionists in Latin America, and nationalists in Asia.

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That makes it hard to separate the effects of one policy from the effects of another.8 The problems of measurement are real ones, and results of this kind always have to be taken with a grain of salt, but it remains interesting that, with so very few exceptions, those studies point to great advantages with free trade. All the same, they have to be supplemented with theoretical analysis and case studies of individual countries before and after trade liberalization measures. Such studies also quite clearly bring out the advantages of free trade. The economist Sebastian Edwards maintains that the important thing is not to devise exact, objective measurements but to test many different variables, so as to see whether a pattern emerges. Using 8 different yardsticks of openness, he has made 18 calculations based on several data sets and using a variety of calculation methods.

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There does not seem to be any strong and unambiguous connection between increased trade and changes in equality—except, possibly, a slightly positive connection. Certain groups lose out by free trade, but they are as likely to be the protected rich as the poor. Changes in equality depend primarily on overall policy. Results in trade-liberalizing countries varied during the 1990s: in China, inequality increased, in Costa Rica and Vietnam it remained constant, and in countries like Ghana and Thailand it diminished. After many years of a communist-planned economy and deepest poverty, Vietnam since the end of the 1980s has introduced free trade reforms and measures of domestic liberalization.

10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less by Garett Jones

Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Brexit referendum, business cycle, central bank independence, clean water, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Edward Glaeser, fake news, financial independence, game design, German hyperinflation, hive mind, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jean Tirole, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, Mohammed Bouazizi, Neil Armstrong, open economy, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, price stability, rent control, Robert Solow, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen

House of Representatives: vs. European Union, 151; vs. Senate, 33–34, 110; votes on trade liberalization, 33 U.S. presidents: and election year economy, 30–31, 194n5; term of, 188; and trade disputes, 34, 194n12 U.S. Senate, 109–10, 141, 180; backloading the pork in, 29–30; vs. European Union, 151; vs. House of Representatives, 33–34, 110; impact of looming elections on Senators, 3–4, 29–30, 31, 33, 35; six-year terms, 146–47; staggered elections for, 146–47, 179; unanimous consent in, 159–60; votes on trade liberalization, 33 U.S. state senators: legislative productivity among, 38–39 U.S. Supreme Court: lifetime tenure of members, 64, 65; as undemocratic, 64 Vanhanen, Tatu: Index of Democratization, 19 Van Prooijen, Jan-Willem, 98–100 Venezuela: health care in, 104 Verba, Sidney: on education, 109 voters: attitudes regarding cheap money, 53, 56; attitudes regarding currency devaluation, 36; attitudes regarding inflation, 30, 52, 53; attitudes regarding recent past, 4, 29–30; educational level of, 95–98, 100, 105–8, 110–12, 114–17, 188; elite control vs. control by, 1, 5, 42–43, 44–45, 52, 53, 56, 63–64, 65–66, 72, 76, 78–79, 80, 83, 84–85, 86–91, 93–94, 110, 119, 127, 136, 148–49, 152–53, 154–56, 167–68, 173, 177–79, 181–83, 186; forgetfulness among, 29–31; as informed, 6–7, 14, 96–98, 102, 103, 112, 179; and labor market policies, 35; older vs. younger, 106–7; as protectionist, 33; public credit with, 28–29; and real per capita GDP, 30; relations with judges, 66–68; restrictions on right to vote, 95–98, 101–2, 104–12, 113–17; short memories of, 29–30; women as, 105 Wagner, W.

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Economist Paola Conconi of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and her coauthors established this fact in an aptly titled paper published in 2014: “Policymakers’ Horizon and Trade Reforms: The Protectionist Effect of Elections.” They provide anecdotal evidence for their case in a footnote: “For example, during her first [term] as senator from New York state, Hillary Clinton voted on six trade liberalization bills, four times in favor (during the first four years) and twice against (during the last two years).”⁹ Politicians act differently when the election looms. They don’t just show up to more county fairs and church services; they also are more reluctant to support one policy reform that experts overwhelmingly agree on: freer international trade.

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On the productivity statement, two-thirds agreed or strongly agreed, and on unemployment rates, half agreed and many abstained or were uncertain, but in neither case did more than 5% of respondents disagree with the statement.¹⁵ The economists’ consensus on labor market reforms isn’t as overwhelming as with trade liberalization, but almost all the weight is on one side—the side of market-friendly, liberal economics. So how do looming elections fit into this? Rickard and Caraway checked to see if the IMF imposed fewer labor market liberalization reforms when an election was looming. Financial crises are somewhat random, so if they happen when elections are years away, does the IMF demand lots of pie-growing, productivity-increasing reforms?

The Locavore's Dilemma by Pierre Desrochers, Hiroko Shimizu

air freight, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, British Empire, Columbian Exchange, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, edge city, Edward Glaeser, food desert, food miles, Food sovereignty, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, intermodal, invention of agriculture, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, land tenure, megacity, moral hazard, mortgage debt, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, profit motive, refrigerator car, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl

It must foster the production of substitutes irrespective of [economic] considerations. It cannot do without full government control of production because the selfishness of the individual citizens would thwart the plans of the leader. Even in peacetime the commander-in-chief must be entrusted with economic dictatorship.” 52 Many economists otherwise supportive of trade liberalization have also been willing to make an exception to their stance when national security was thought to be at stake. Perhaps the most famous was Adam Smith, who observed, “defence… is of much more importance than opulence.”53 In short, Smith implied, autarkic policies come at a significant price, but it pales in comparison to starvation in time of conflicts.

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., as if they had been converted to barley) went from around 27 million tons to no less than 74 million tons during this period.65 By 1938, the British and German markets absorbed more than 76% of Danish exports, which were mostly made up of livestock products such as butter, eggs, lard, and bacon. As Karl Brandt argued in 1945, far from proving the assertions of agricultural protectionists that all trade liberalization “would financially ruin millions of European family farms and reduce the farmers to abject misery and poverty… [or a] general depression of their living standards,” Danish agriculture from the middle of the 19th century to the eve of World War II illustrated that, by embracing free trade, Danish farmers had not only learned to “discover the fields of production in which they had the best opportunity to compete successfully with the farmers of the world, but they also were able to develop their own abilities, their agricultural production and marketing plants to almost functional perfection,” the result being “a most remarkable degree of culture and the art of decent living.”66 The Nazi invasion of Denmark in April 1940, however, quickly cut off the importation of foreign oilseeds and grains along with access to the British market.

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As estimated by the authors of a recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on humanity’s capacity to feed itself in 2050, even if most of today’s less advanced economies are expected to provide for most of their future needs by expanding their own production, they would still need to double their net imports of cereals, from 135 million metric tons in 2008–09 to 300 million by mid-century, and therefore require not only infrastructure improvements, but also a “global trading system that is fair and competitive.”78 Paradoxically, a world where in a few decades 9 billion people could afford to purchase their food from 90 million highly efficient farmers using the planet’s most productive locations would be incredibly more food secure than one in which a few billion farmers feed their neighbors but lack the infrastructure to ship their products over long distances. Food insecurity is mainly due to a lack of income opportunities rather than geography, as poor and hungry people cannot afford to purchase food from the international market. Economic development through trade liberalization is what food security should really be about.79, 80 6 Myth #5: Locavorism Offers Tastier, More Nutritious, and Safer Food Of all the frauds practiced by mercenary dealers, there is none more reprehensible, and at the same time more prevalent, than the sophistication1 of the various articles of food.

The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class by Kees Van der Pijl

anti-communist, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, book value, Boycotts of Israel, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, collective bargaining, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, deskilling, diversified portfolio, European colonialism, floating exchange rates, full employment, imperial preference, Joseph Schumpeter, liberal capitalism, mass immigration, means of production, military-industrial complex, North Sea oil, plutocrats, profit maximization, RAND corporation, scientific management, strikebreaker, Suez crisis 1956, trade liberalization, trade route, union organizing, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, War on Poverty

In late 1961, together with Christian Herter and Will Clayton, Ball had proposed to make an Atlantic Partnership the basis for trade liberalization and the coordination of development aid. Now he repeated the advice. Ball stressed the value of the newly-formed OECD for coordinating economic policy between the North Atlantic states and for jointly organizing their intervention in the underdeveloped world via aid programmes. These two goals replaced the trade liberalization objective advanced by the original OEEC and reflected the structural growth of state intervention as well as the projected widening of the international circuit of finance capital beyond the North Atlantic area.96 On 4 July, finally, the President made his famous statement that the United States was ‘ready for a “Declaration of Interdependence” ’ and was ‘prepared to discuss with a United Europe the ways and means of forming a concrete Atlantic partnership.’97 Concentrating the decisive military assets in American hands in the meantime was a crucial aspect of the Partnership concept.

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In Link’s words, Wilson in this year ‘became almost a new political creature, and under his leadership a Democratic Congress enacted the most sweeping and significant progressive legislation in the history of the country up to that time’.27 Before the actual election campaign started, rural credits regulation and labour protection were enacted, and the Presidential support for an eight-hour day was secured. Business interests were compensated by a degree of protectionsim, modifying the earlier trade liberalism. Having manoeuvred himself into a strong position by asking for a popular mandate for peace and cementing approval with progressive legislation, Wilson proceeded to translate the results into freedom of manoeuvre in foreign affairs by publicly stressing the ‘popular’ nature of his international proposals.

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It was promptly repealed when the Democrats regained control of both houses in the November election.74 The embargoes against Eastern Europe and the relatively weak effort at penetrating the dependencies of European imperialism lent free-trade policy its markedly Atlantic accent. Free trade was an important element in the requirements placed before the recipient Marshall states by Undersecretary Clayton at the Paris conference in September 1947. Clayton’s list, consisting essentially of a promise of regional self-sufficiency in four years, trade liberalization, and steps to achieve monetary and financial stability, which was repeated by the respective US ambassadors to each of the sixteen governments, showed the weight Washington attached to the liberalization aspect. At the same time, it testified to the narrowing of the wartime global scope to Atlantic dimensions.

The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas by Janek Wasserman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Wald, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, Donald Trump, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, Internet Archive, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, New Journalism, New Urbanism, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Moving beyond the idea of limiting an already-existing state, neoliberals like the Austrians imagined how to create a state that protected economic freedom from government planners, international governing institutions, and democratic polities alike.20 The Austrians thus helped build postwar neoliberalism, which, in the name of freedom, prioritized the creation of a market-based society sustained by a strong state, the rule of law, and limited democratic involvement. They also contributed to the formation of a number of transnational epistemic communities that advocated trade liberalization, floating exchange rates, state deregulation, and privatization. Austrians played instrumental roles in these communities by persuading institutional actors, state and nonstate, to follow their prescriptions in times of uncertainty and crisis. Through GATT, the Bellagio Group, the RAND Corporation, and others, Haberler, Machlup, and Morgenstern proved adept at behind-the-scenes policy interventions that shaped economic liberalization and Cold War reasoning in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Meanwhile in New York City, Mises faced similar challenges. He had to wait nearly a decade to establish a stable circle. When he did, the Mises-Kreis little resembled its predecessor, producing a different, more dogmatic “Austrian economics.” Haberler and Machlup took on leadership roles in incipient debates on globalization and trade liberalization by spearheading new policy initiatives. Haberler’s recasting of international trade signaled the beginning of a new “liberal international economic order.” Machlup starred in “reforming the world monetary system,” propelling the international monetary debates that overturned the Bretton Woods order.

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The fund-raising efforts of Hunold and Luhnow ensured continued viability by providing the cash to make all-expenses-paid meetings possible.9 In recent years, the MPS has become associated with a neoliberalism that advocates “market fundamentalism” predicated on neoclassical economics, limited government, international trade liberalization, and globalization. In its formative years, it looked less single-minded and dogmatic. Within the society, there were staunch antistatists like Mises. There were also German ordoliberals like Röpke and Rüstow, who saw the state serving a central role in the creation of markets and the maintenance of law, order, and prosperity.

Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy by Dani Rodrik

3D printing, airline deregulation, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, central bank independence, centre right, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, continuous integration, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, global value chain, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, open immigration, Pareto efficiency, postindustrial economy, precautionary principle, price stability, public intellectual, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, World Values Survey, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The guiding philosophy behind the Bretton Woods regime, which governed the world economy until the 1970s, was that nations—not only the advanced nations but also the newly independent ones—needed the policy space within which they could manage their economies and protect their social contracts. Capital controls, restricting the free flow of finance between countries, were viewed as an inherent element of the global financial system. Trade liberalization remained limited to manufactured goods and to industrialized nations; when imports of textiles and clothing from low-cost countries threatened domestic social bargains by causing job losses in affected industries and regions, these, too, were carved out as special regimes. Yet trade and investment flows grew by leaps and bounds, in no small part because the Bretton Woods recipe made for healthy domestic policy environments.

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The Petri-Plummer model is squarely rooted in decades of academic trade modeling, which makes a sharp distinction between effects that are microeconomic (that shape resource allocation across sectors) and those that are macroeconomic (that relate to overall levels of demand and employment). In this tradition, trade liberalization is a microeconomic “shock” that affects the composition of employment, but not its overall level. Trade economists tend to analyze trade agreements in such terms, which renders the Petri-Plummer model more congenial to them. By comparison, the Capaldo framework lacks sectoral and country detail; its behavioral assumptions remain opaque; and its extreme Keynesian assumptions sit ill at ease with its medium-term perspective.

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Compensation also ensures buy-in from broader constituencies and should be good politics. Prior to the welfare state, the tension between openness and redistribution was resolved either by large-scale emigration of workers or by reimposing trade protection, especially in agriculture.2 With the rise of the welfare state, the constraint became less binding, allowing for more trade liberalization. Today the advanced countries that are the most exposed to the international economy are also those where safety nets and social insurance programs—welfare states—are the most extensive.3 Research in Europe has shown that losers from globalization within countries tend to favor more active social programs and labor-market interventions.4 If opposition to trade has not become politically salient in Europe today, it is in some part because such social protections remain strong there, despite having weakened in recent years.

Kicking Awaythe Ladder by Ha-Joon Chang

Asian financial crisis, business cycle, central bank independence, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, fear of failure, income inequality, income per capita, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, land bank, land reform, liberal world order, moral hazard, open economy, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, scientific management, short selling, Simon Kuznets, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, Washington Consensus

Nowadays, some economists even believe that the Great Depression was caused primarily by these tariffs'. 3 The likes of Germany and Japan erected high trade barriers and also started creating powerful cartels, which were closely linked with fascism and these countries' external aggression in the following decades.4 The world free trade system finally ended in 1932, when Britain, hitherto its champion, succumbed to temptation and reintroduced tariffs. The resulting contraction and instability in the world economy, and then the Second World War, destroyed the last remnants of the first Liberal world order. After the Second World War, so the story goes, some significant progress was made in trade liberalization through the early GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) talks. However, dirigiste approaches to economic management dominated the policy-making scene until the 1970s in the developed world, and until the early 1980s in developing countries (as well as the Communist world until its collapse in 1989).

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It most certainly could not have flourished, as it has done, both in these states, and in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, through the fostering bounties which the highpriced food of the British artisan has offered to the cheaper fed manufacturer of those countries'.45 Symbolic though the repeal of Corn Law may have been, the real shift to free trade only happened in the 1850s. It was only after Gladstone's budgets of the 1850s, and especially that of 1860, in conjunction with the Anglo-French free trade treaty (the so-called Cobden-Chevalier Treaty) signed that year, that most tariffs were eliminated. The following passage succinctly describes the magnitude of trade liberalization that happened in Britain during the 1850s. 'In 1848, Britain had 1,146 dutiable articles; by 1860 she had forty-eight, all but twelve being revenue duties on luxuries or semi-luxuries. Once the most complex in Europe, the British tariff could now be printed "on half a page of Whitaker's Almanack" It is important to note here that Britain's technological lead that enabled this shift to a free trade regime had been achieved 'behind high and long-lasting tariff barriers'.47 It is also important to note that the overall liberalization of the British economy that occurred during the mid-nineteenth century, of which trade liberalization was just a part, was a highly controlled affair overseen by the state, and not achieved through a laissez-faire approach.48 It should also be pointed out that Britain 'adopted Free Trade painfully slowly: eighty-four years from The Wealth of Nations to Gladstone's 1860 budget; thirty-one from Waterloo to the ritual victory of 1846'.49 Moreover, the free-trade regime did not last long.

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Once the most complex in Europe, the British tariff could now be printed "on half a page of Whitaker's Almanack" It is important to note here that Britain's technological lead that enabled this shift to a free trade regime had been achieved 'behind high and long-lasting tariff barriers'.47 It is also important to note that the overall liberalization of the British economy that occurred during the mid-nineteenth century, of which trade liberalization was just a part, was a highly controlled affair overseen by the state, and not achieved through a laissez-faire approach.48 It should also be pointed out that Britain 'adopted Free Trade painfully slowly: eighty-four years from The Wealth of Nations to Gladstone's 1860 budget; thirty-one from Waterloo to the ritual victory of 1846'.49 Moreover, the free-trade regime did not last long.

Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States by Francis Fukuyama

Andrei Shleifer, Atahualpa, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business climate, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, creative destruction, crony capitalism, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, land reform, land tenure, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, New Urbanism, oil shock, open economy, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Academics outside and inside Korea were concerned that Korean cultural values might prove to be an insurmountable obstacle that would impede economic growth. But South Korea, like Taiwan, was able to modify its economic strategy after the 1950s, just as the United States had done after World War II by establishing an international system for the liberalization of trade. While some countries carried out the necessary structural reforms for trade liberalization, Latin American countries opted not to do so. There were, however, two other major areas in which Latin America and East Asia diverged: agrarian reform and human capital development. At the end of World War II, the United States imposed drastic agrarian reform on Japan and its former colony, South Korea; the Nationalist Party government in Taiwan also carried out major agrarian reform.

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It is interesting and ironic that it is easier to open a new business in the People’s Republic of China than in Mexico or Argentina, and three times easier in communist China than in Brazil. It should come as no surprise that the countries that facilitate the creation of new businesses, which generate employment and income, grow more. There are, however, some positive cases in Latin America. Mexico’s trade liberalization program, which allowed its subsequent entry to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), generated quick growth in the sectors linked to the international economy. Despite table 4.6 Number of Days Required to Start Up a New Firm, 2003 Australia United States Puerto Rico Chile Japan South Korea Thailand People’s Republic of China Mexico Argentina Brazil 2 4 6 28 31 33 42 46 51 68 152 Source: World Development Indicators 2004 ( Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004).

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The democratic transitions were nearing completion, with the last in Chile (1990) about to take place. At a conference at the Institute for International Economics in 1989, a group of economists identified 10 key reforms that were essential to restore economic growth.23 The now well-known shopping list dubbed the Washington Consensus included fiscal discipline, trade liberalization, tax reform, a competitive exchange rate regime, privatization, liberalization of foreign direct investment inflows, market-determined interest rates, and deregulation. And there were two additional priorities: one focused on reducing subsidies and redirecting government spending toward education, health, and infrastructure development; the second was the enforcement of property rights.

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times by Giovanni Arrighi

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business logic, business process, classic study, colonial rule, commoditize, Corn Laws, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, double entry bookkeeping, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial independence, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, informal economy, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, late capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, means of production, Meghnad Desai, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Peace of Westphalia, post-Fordism, profit maximization, Project for a New American Century, RAND corporation, reserve currency, scientific management, spice trade, Strategic Defense Initiative, Suez canal 1869, the market place, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, Yom Kippur War

The free trade ideologized and practiced by the US government throughout the period of its hegemonic ascendancy has been, rather, a strategy of bilateral and multilateral intergovernmental negotiation of trade liberalization, aimed primarily at opening up other states to US commodities and enterprise. Nineteenth-century beliefs in the “selfregulating market” — in Polanyi’s (1957) sense — became the official ideology of the US government only in the 1980s under the Reagan and Bush administrations in response to the hegemonic crisis of the 1970s. Even then, however, the unilateral measures of trade liberalization actually undertaken by the US government were very limited. In any event, free trade played no role in the formation of the Cold War world order.

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As previously noted, what eventually came into being — the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) created in 1948 — was no more than a forum for the bilateral and multilateral negotiation of reductions in tariffs and of other restrictions on international trade. It left the pace of trade liberalization in the hands of national governments. Although the GATT no doubt helped in reconstituting a multilateral trading system, trade liberalization followed rather than led the world economic expansion of the 1950s and 1960s, in sharp contrast to Britain’s unilateral adoption of free trade which preceded and contributed decisively to the mid-nineteenth-century expansion of world trade and production.

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But as long as the US government wielded effective control over world liquidity — as it did throughout the 1950s and most of the 1960s — it could use this control to promote and sustain a generalized expansion of world trade with few precedents in capitalist history (see chapter 4). Similarly, the chief instrument of world market formation under US hegemony, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), left in the hands of governments in general, and of the US government in particular, control over the pace and direction of trade liberalization. By unilaterally liberalizing its foreign trade in the nineteenth century, Britain had ipso facto forgone the possibility of using the prospect of such a liberalization as a weapon in forcing other governments to liberalize their own trade. By never renouncing the use of this weapon through unilateral free trade, the United States instituted a trade regime that was far less “generous” towards the rest of the world than the British regime.

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

Divided Nations: Why Global Governance Is Failing, and What We Can Do about It Globalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future The Case for Aid The Economics of Sustainable Development Economic Reform, Trade and Agricultural Development Modelling Economy-wide Reforms Trade Liberalization: Global Economic Implications Open Economies The Future of Agriculture Economic Crisis: Lessons from Brazil Making Race THE BUTTERFLY DEFECT How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do about It IAN GOLDIN AND MIKE MARIATHASAN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goldin, Ian, 1955– The butterfly defect : how globalization creates systemic risks, and what to do about it / Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan.

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Antweiler, Copeland, and Taylor’s landmark study, referred to previously, also suggests that economic growth “drives concentrations down by 1.25–1.5 percent via a technique effect.”37 The authors concluded that “trade-induced technique and scale effects imply a net reduction in pollution from these sources,” meaning that “freer trade appears to be good for the environment.”38 Ian Goldin and Alan Winters, on the other hand, along with Cole and Elliott, stress that the net effect can be different depending on the characteristics of the pollutant: in addition to the detrimental net effects of nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide, Cole and Elliott report that “technique effects are dominating scale effects for SO2 and BOD.”39 Thus we see that in the case of some pollutants, “pollution declines with per capita income,” though the authors stress that this is not universal.40 In the same spirit, and in contrast to his findings with respect to air pollutants, Junyi Shen observes that “for water pollutants (COD, arsenic, and cadmium) trade liberalization decreases emissions.”41 Using an instrumental variables approach to address estimation issues related to the endogeneity of trade, Jeffrey Frankel and Andrew Rose show “that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution” and, more precisely, that “statistical significance is high for concentrations of SO2, moderate for NO2, and lacking for particulate matter.”42 Like Antweiler, Copeland, and Taylor, they conclude that “there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment.”43 Arriving at a similar conclusion, André Dua and Daniel Esty report that, for the Asia–Pacific region, “economic expansion and environmental protection can, in fact, be made mutually supportive.”44 This is an example of the scale effect and relates to what economists term the intensive margin.

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Everything else being equal, this increase in the scale of economic activity and energy use will lead to higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions.” See WTO, 2013c, “The Multilateral Trading System and Climate Change,” World Trade Organization, accessed 1 December 2013, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/envir_e/climate_change_e.pdf. 31. Junyi Shen, 2008, “Trade Liberalization and Environmental Degradation in China,” Applied Economics 40: 997–1004, quote on 997. 32. Pongsiri et al., 2009, 945. 33. Ibid. 34. L. Philip Lounibos, 2001, “Invasions by Insect: Vectors of Human Disease,” Annual Review of Entomology 47: 233–266, quote on 233. 35. Ibid. 36. Authors’ calculation using producer support estimates for OECD countries relating to 2007–11.

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment by Lucas Chancel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Anthropocene, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, energy security, energy transition, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, green new deal, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, urban planning, very high income, Washington Consensus

TRADE GLOBALIZATION Another explanation that is often put forward holds that the increase in inequality is due to the effects of trade globalization, which is to say the growing proportion of world production that crosses international boundaries.15 The opening up of commerce through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947, and subsequently in the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the 1990s, put low-skilled workers in developed countries in competition with those in emerging and developing countries. The increase in inequality in developed countries was predicted and explained more than seventy years ago by one of the most important results of international trade theory, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem.16 Trade liberalization, the theorem states, leads to increased demand for unskilled workers in the countries of the South (where they are supposed to be “abundant”) and a relatively greater demand for skilled workers in the countries of the North (for the same reason), which leads in turn to an increase in inequality in rich countries and a corresponding reduction of inequality in poor countries.17 Subsequently it became necessary to explain why Stolper and Samuelson’s model had been contradicted by events, since trade did not take place to the extent forecast between countries richly endowed with skilled labor in the North and countries richly endowed with unskilled labor in the South, but predominantly between countries in the North instead.

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The increase in inequality in developed countries was predicted and explained more than seventy years ago by one of the most important results of international trade theory, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem.16 Trade liberalization, the theorem states, leads to increased demand for unskilled workers in the countries of the South (where they are supposed to be “abundant”) and a relatively greater demand for skilled workers in the countries of the North (for the same reason), which leads in turn to an increase in inequality in rich countries and a corresponding reduction of inequality in poor countries.17 Subsequently it became necessary to explain why Stolper and Samuelson’s model had been contradicted by events, since trade did not take place to the extent forecast between countries richly endowed with skilled labor in the North and countries richly endowed with unskilled labor in the South, but predominantly between countries in the North instead. Moreover, most economists long continued to insist that the negative trade effects predicted by the theorem were limited, if not in fact nonexistent, in industrialized countries, chiefly because trade liberalization enabled low-wage workers in these countries to purchase less expensive goods, which therefore strengthened their purchasing power. Not quite fifteen years after the publication of his influential 1994 book on international trade, Paul Krugman did an about-face, saying that he had not taken into account all the relevant information in his earlier work (for which, by a twist of fate, he was shortly thereafter to be awarded the Nobel Prize).18 This work, he now claimed, needed to be reinterpreted in the light of new data on the evolution of inequality.19 Owing to the strong market penetration of goods from emerging countries since the 1990s, trade globalization could now be seen to be a good candidate for explaining the rise in inequality in the industrialized world.

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In particular, they can refuse to sign trade agreements with countries that do not meet CO2e emission reduction goals. The EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which provisionally entered into force in September 2017, does the opposite, however, by making climate protection a secondary objective by comparison with trade liberalization. Another option is to institute a border carbon adjustment (BCA)—a levy on the carbon content of imported products—with a view to protecting domestic industry against foreign companies that are not bound by stringent targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In this way an equitable relationship between domestic and foreign companies could be reestablished.

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems by Linda Yueh

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bike sharing, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, forward guidance, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, lateral thinking, life extension, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working-age population

Since the reign of William and Mary, the British government had offered financial support to its prime constituency, namely landowners. British cereals were among the most expensive in Europe, yet until 1760 Britain was able to be a major grain exporter owing to government subsidies.15 In the late eighteenth century there was a brief period of trade liberalization between Britain and France, but this ended with the Napoleonic Wars. This was followed by the reinstatement of the Corn Laws in 1815. Trade was not very free for much of the first half of the nineteenth century. Adam Smith had excluded food in his defence of free trade. Ricardo, by contrast, was not too concerned about depending on foreign countries for food, noting that even during the Napoleonic Wars, France had continued to export corn to Britain after lobbying by French exporters.

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There are also ‘manu-services’, such as the output of firms in the engineering and software sectors that produce both goods and services, and these are easily misclassified by statisticians. If services were measured more accurately, perhaps we could worry a bit less about the trade deficit. There is also huge scope for growth in the export of services. Unlike in manufacturing, post-war global trade liberalization has not progressed much in services. Nearly all of the global trade in goods is covered by a wide-reaching multilateral agreement overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO). By contrast, services haven’t seen the same degree of opening up of markets. Service-sector liberalization would help ameliorate Britain’s and America’s trade deficits since they are among the largest services economies.

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So, in an imperfect global trade regime, America’s and Britain’s comparative advantage hasn’t been able to deliver all of the benefits postulated by Ricardo. He would also be concerned about the lack of a level playing field in international trade. Ricardo would have pushed harder for the opening of global markets, particularly the relatively closed services sector. Services trade liberalization would help both America’s and the UK’s trade position and the global economy too, since over 70 per cent of world GDP consists of services. With greater opening of trade and investment in services, Britain’s deficit position may improve if its dominant sector can gain greater traction in world markets.

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bike sharing, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, forward guidance, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, lateral thinking, life extension, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working-age population

Since the reign of William and Mary, the British government had offered financial support to its prime constituency, namely landowners. British cereals were among the most expensive in Europe, yet until 1760 Britain was able to be a major grain exporter owing to government subsidies.15 In the late eighteenth century there was a brief period of trade liberalization between Britain and France, but this ended with the Napoleonic Wars. This was followed by the reinstatement of the Corn Laws in 1815. Trade was not very free for much of the first half of the nineteenth century. Adam Smith had excluded food in his defence of free trade. Ricardo, by contrast, was not too concerned about depending on foreign countries for food, noting that even during the Napoleonic Wars, France had continued to export corn to Britain after lobbying by French exporters.

…

There are also ‘manu-services’, such as the output of firms in the engineering and software sectors that produce both goods and services, and these are easily misclassified by statisticians. If services were measured more accurately, perhaps we could worry a bit less about the trade deficit. There is also huge scope for growth in the export of services. Unlike in manufacturing, post-war global trade liberalization has not progressed much in services. Nearly all of the global trade in goods is covered by a wide-reaching multilateral agreement overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO). By contrast, services haven’t seen the same degree of opening up of markets. Service-sector liberalization would help ameliorate Britain’s and America’s trade deficits since they are among the largest services economies.

…

So, in an imperfect global trade regime, America’s and Britain’s comparative advantage hasn’t been able to deliver all of the benefits postulated by Ricardo. He would also be concerned about the lack of a level playing field in international trade. Ricardo would have pushed harder for the opening of global markets, particularly the relatively closed services sector. Services trade liberalization would help both America’s and the UK’s trade position and the global economy too, since over 70 per cent of world GDP consists of services. With greater opening of trade and investment in services, Britain’s deficit position may improve if its dominant sector can gain greater traction in world markets.

Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream by R. Christopher Whalen

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, commoditize, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, debt deflation, falling living standards, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, housing crisis, interchangeable parts, invention of radio, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, liquidity trap, low interest rates, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, plutocrats, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce

Even before the WWII ended, the Roosevelt Administration drafted a document authorizing the ITO and enabling legislation from Congress for broad powers to reduce tariffs at the discretion of the Executive Branch. The support for trade liberalization was consistent with the traditional Democratic opposition to tariffs, which Progressives saw merely as a means of enhancing the monopoly profits of big business for the benefit of the rich. Republicans, on the other hand, were the traditional protectionists and built the government’s limited finances on tariff revenue. But the most important domestic factor behind the broad and largely bipartisan support for trade liberalization was the fact that while much of the world lay in ruins, U.S. industrial capacity had grown to first in the world.

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Like Wilson, he ran against the war, but would involve the United States in assisting the British from the outset of hostilities. FDR subsequently ran even bigger deficits than Hoover and eventually took American back to war. Ever duplicitous, FDR at first campaigned against tariffs in the months leading up to the 1932 election, promising that trade liberalization would be a key part of his administration. Echoing Democratic leaders such as Bryan and Al Smith, FDR made tariff reduction a centerpiece at the start of his campaign against Hoover. By the end of his campaign, FDR was singing from the protectionist gospel of the Republican Party. His flexibility in regard to these serious issues of economic and financial policy evidenced an agenda that was first and foremost political.

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Both Baruch and Hoover spoke strongly against the new loan to Britain, insisting that American needs first be reckoned.76 Vinson had not reached Washington by taking risks and in 1947, with Truman down badly in the polls and the American electorate restive, selling Congress on forgiving the Lend Lease loans to Britain, much less make new loans to London, was difficult. Public opinion, led by major media organs like the New York Times, condemned Bretton Woods and the idea of trade liberalization—unless the United Kingdom and other nations of Europe followed suit and dropped their tariffs as well. Eventually, after lengthy negotiations and sometimes difficult exchanges between Keynes and Vinson, the two sides agreed on forgiveness of the lend-lease obligation and low-interest rate loans to finance Britain’s balance of payments deficit.

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization by Michael O’sullivan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, classic study, cloud computing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, credit crunch, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, knowledge economy, liberal world order, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, performance metric, Phillips curve, private military company, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Sinatra Doctrine, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, Suez canal 1869, supply-chain management, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, tulip mania, Valery Gerasimov, Washington Consensus

One of the authorities on the matter, the Global Trade Alert center, launched in 2009 to monitor the extent to which cross-government policies liberalize and restrict trade in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, notes that trade-defense measures and bailouts or state aid are by far the most popular measures implemented to “protect” trade, followed by import tariffs and trade finance.8 Trade liberalization has been declining since 2009 and is now at its lowest level since then (for example, in 2018 there were over three times as many trade-discriminatory as trade-liberalizing measures announced internationally). Interestingly, it is the United States that implements the greatest number of trade-protectionist measures (outnumbering trade-liberalizing measures by a factor of nearly nine to one), followed by Russia and India. It is also worth commenting that the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and France have each implemented more traditional trade-protection measures than China, though China does have more discreet ways of tipping trade relations in its favor.

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (December 8, 2015): 15078–15083. Case, S. The Third Wave. Simon and Schuster, 2016. Chambers, D., E. Dimson, and J. Foo. “Keynes the Stock Market Investor.” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA) 50, no. 4 (2015): 431–449. Che, Y., Y. Lu, J. Pierce, and P. Schott. “Does Trade Liberalization with China Affect US Elections?” Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Divisions of Research and Statistics and Monetary Affairs, 2016-039, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, 2016. Chen, S., and J. S. Kang. “Credit Booms: Is China Different?” IMF Working Paper 18/2, January 2018. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/01/05/Credit-Booms-Is-China-Different-45537.

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Zanardi, “Policy Makers Horizon and Trade Votes,” CEPR Discussion Paper DP 8561, September 2011. 8. S. J. Evenett and J. Fritz, “Global Trade Plateaus,” Nineteenth Global Trade Alert Report, July 13, 2016, Global Trade Alert, https://www.globaltradealert.org/reports/15. 9. Autor, Dorn, Hanson, and Majlesi, “Importing Political Polarization?” 10. Che, Lu, Pierce, and Schott, “Does Trade Liberalization with China Affect US Elections?” 11. Lang and Mendes, “The Distribution of Gains from Globalization.” 12. R. Dobbs, A. Madgavkar, J. Manyika et al., “Poorer Than Their Parents?” 13. Jeff Desjardins and Visual Capitalist, “This Is What Countries around the World Think about Globalization,” World Economic Forum, November 13, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/what-your-country-thinks-of-globalization. 14.

Global Financial Crisis by Noah Berlatsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, centre right, circulation of elites, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, energy security, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Money creation, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, social contagion, South China Sea, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, working poor

During the campaign, he opposed bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia and Panama and called for renegotiating NAFTA. In his first meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, shortly before Inauguration Day, Obama expressed his desire to “upgrade” NAFTA. The world is now waiting to see whether, as president, Obama will be more skeptical of trade liberalization than Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Bill Clinton, the latter of whom championed NAFTA in the face of intense opposition from his fellow Democrats in Congress. If Obama wishes to maintain U.S. credibility and bolster America’s trade part182 Solutions to the Global Financial Crisis Protectionism in the European Union To revive the economy and curb the rising unemployment rate, leaders of some EU [European Union] member states have begun using protectionist measures at the cost of other member states. . . .

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But when push comes to shove, will he risk angering Democratic lawmakers—and powerful Democratic constituencies—in order to defend free trade? The Europeans and Canadians are eager to know. So are political and business leaders in Latin America. Free trade is especially important to Latin America. In countries throughout the region, U.S.-led trade liberalization has improved economic opportunities, fortified market-oriented democracy, and strengthened the rule of law. At a time of major economic turmoil, U.S. leadership on free trade is critical. Obama must provide it. He faces at least three big tests on hemispheric trade: whether he will revisit NAFTA; whether he will endorse (and urge Congress to approve) the Colombia and Panama FTAs; and whether he will pursue new FTAs with countries such as 183 The Global Financial Crisis Brazil and Uruguay.

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The Colombia and Panama deals were both signed in late 2006; their approval by Congress is long overdue. Colombia is a key U.S. ally in South America whose government deserves credit for reducing violence and working with the United States to curb drug production. In countries throughout the region, U.S.-led trade liberalization has improved economic opportunities, fortified market-oriented democracy, and strengthened the rule of law. Brazil and Uruguay are both members of Mercosur, the South American trade bloc, which would complicate U.S. efforts to negotiate bilateral FTAs but not necessarily stymie them. In 2006, U.S. and Brazilian officials launched a new U.S.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein

Admiral Zheng, asset allocation, bank run, Benoit Mandelbrot, British Empire, call centre, clean water, Columbian Exchange, Corn Laws, cotton gin, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, domestication of the camel, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Eratosthenes, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Gini coefficient, God and Mammon, high-speed rail, ice-free Arctic, imperial preference, income inequality, intermodal, James Hargreaves, John Harrison: Longitude, Khyber Pass, low skilled workers, non-tariff barriers, Paul Samuelson, placebo effect, Port of Oakland, refrigerator car, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, two and twenty, upwardly mobile, working poor, zero-sum game

Many American advocates of free trade realize that in order for the current system of relatively free trade to survive, the nation's social safety net needs to be expanded, but lip service, at best, is all that is usually offered. Consider Jagdish Bhagwati, perhaps today's best-known proponent of trade liberalization and a formidable academician who has trained many of today's foremost economists. His book In Defense of Globalization spends three hundred pages living up to its title; it gives the issue of "adjustment assistance" less than two pages. The following passage from this book captures the tone used by many free traders in discussing displaced workers: If a steel mill closes down in Pennsylvania because steel in California has become cheaper, workers tend to accept that as something that happens, and the general unemployment insurance seems to be an adequate way to deal with the bad hand that an unpredictable fate has dealt one.

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Or they ask for special relief in the form of additional unemployment compensation, with or without retraining benefits and requirements." Professor Bhagwati only grudgingly accepts the need for compensation. Referring to a safety net specifically intended for those put out of work by foreign products, he continues: "This quasi-xenophobia is just a fact of life. If trade liberalization is to occur and be sustained, one or more of these special programs and policies have to be considered."34 Such sentiments not only unnecessarily antagonize workers but also are unfair; American industry has in fact been much more adept than labor at getting protection, particularly in the form of non-tariff barriers: quotas, subsidies, antidumping legislation, and the like.35 Trade economists are slowly beginning to realize that they must stop being their own worst enemies.

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Ward, "The Industrial Revolution and British Imperialism, 1750-1850," Economic History Review 47, no. 1 (February 1994): 47. 9. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), I: 82. 10. Ibid., II:33; Barber, 97. 11. Anthony Webster, "The Political Economy of Trade Liberalization: The East India Company Charter Act of 1813," The Economic History Review 43, no. 3 (August 1990): 404-419. 12. Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 51. 13. W. Travis Hanes III, The Opium Wars (Naperville IL: Sourcebooks, 2002), 13-19. 14. Hsin-pao, 9-10. 15.

Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser

Airbnb, back-to-the-land, big-box store, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Caribbean Basin Initiative, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Dmitri Mendeleev, Donald Trump, export processing zone, facts on the ground, flying shuttle, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, Honoré de Balzac, indoor plumbing, invention of the sewing machine, invisible hand, microplastics / micro fibres, moral panic, North Ronaldsay sheep, off-the-grid, operation paperclip, out of africa, QR code, Rana Plaza, Ronald Reagan, sheep dike, smart cities, special economic zone, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce

Kennedy also provided tax breaks to southern textile producers to help them upgrade equipment, and established funds to provide for job training and assistance for displaced workers, which remained in effect until Ronald Reagan cut these programs in the 1980s. But these programs were designed to help the U.S. industries fade less slowly, not to keep them alive. Trade liberalization became the new paradigm. And Kennedy’s quota was to have unexpected consequences. * * * — Kennedy’s quota regime had been set at the behest of the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute, and thus it only regulated cotton fabric and clothing made from cotton fabric. Increasingly, however, the important industry story in the postwar period was taking place in the realm of synthetics like nylon.

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Fifteen percent of the rising U.S. trade deficit was because of apparel imports, they announced. The country now imported fifty-three yards of cloth and clothing for every one hundred yards made in the U.S. The nation’s third largest industry, one that had contributed $45 billion to the GNP in 1983 compared to the automotive industry’s $40 billion, was in danger. Trade liberalization had already caused massive job loss in the 1970s: 210,000 people worked in New York City’s garment sector in 1970. By 1981, this figure had almost halved. Now, they warned, the 2.3 million workers who worked in fiber, textiles, and clothing manufacture were at risk. Between 1972 and 1991, the number of workers in U.S. manufacturing is estimated to have dropped by 7 percent, with the textile and apparel industry accounting for just over three fifths of this decline.

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At the same time, quotas made it almost impossible for local companies to develop their own export products for the American market. In some places, local garment manufacturers were thriving before the Caribbean Basin Initiative crippled them. This pattern first played out in Jamaica. Even before the CBI was enshrined in law, Jamaica’s prime minister Edward Seaga had enthusiastically supported its underlying logic of trade liberalization and structural adjustment, and set out to transform his country into a garment exporter. Seaga’s handling of the Jamaican economy met with Reagan’s frequent and vocal approval. Seaga became a crucial consultant to Reagan in forming the Caribbean Basin Initiative’s policies, and, in turn, Reagan held up Jamaica as an example of the type of development that the CBI would reward.

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bob Geldof, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, carried interest, clean water, compensation consultant, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, fake news, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, global village, high net worth, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Elkington, joint-stock company, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Long Term Capital Management, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, old-boy network, open borders, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Skype, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, William Langewiesche

AND AFTER THE EASY PART… The following day, I met with Chile’s former minister of the economy, Jorge Marshall, in his roomy but dimly lit office. At the time the number two man at Chile’s central bank, Marshall tackled the issue another way. “We have come a long way, here in Chile,” he said. “We stabilized the economy. Controlled inflation. And we then opened up. We embraced privatization and trade liberalization. But the secret is that we did those things because they were, comparatively speaking, the easy things for us to do politically. Fixing the core problems within our society—like the inequality issue and finding new ways to stimulate growth—those are much harder.” The necessary reforms, in other words, may not be politically possible, let alone popular.

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They welcomed market opening because, as owners of large entities, they were the most likely to benefit from new capital flows and the increased trade opportunities. But when it came time to address ownership structures that favored—sometimes grotesquely favored—majority shareholders and diminished the rights of minority shareholders, or that produced more competition, those in power dragged their feet. And as trade liberalization connected them to the world, they began to recognize that keeping labor costs down in their countries would help them attract investment capital. Their interests actually grew less and less aligned with those of their workers and more tied to those of the investment bankers and others who could offer them big paydays or accelerated growth (read: wealth creation) for their companies.

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It is the seventh-biggest military contractor in the United States—the only foreign Pentagon supplier to make the top ten—and as The New York Times reported, the company has special access to some of the Defense Department’s most highly classified programs. (Of course, that privileged position may change following revelations that BAE allegedly bribed Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to facilitate a $54 billion arms deal.) Britain’s defense industry is an exemplar of globalization and trade liberalization: The most open defense market in the world, it buys three-quarters of its arms through open competition, forcing British firms to compete with U.S. and European companies. Turner has consistently protested the system, saying it hurts Britain’s indigenous industry, and has openly floated the possibility of merging with a U.S. firm.

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Community Supported Agriculture, declining real wages, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, financial independence, fixed income, gentrification, global village, illegal immigration, informal economy, invisible hand, labor-force participation, land tenure, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Occupy movement, planetary scale, Scramble for Africa, statistical model, structural adjustment programs, the market place, tontine, trade liberalization, UNCLOS, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Moreover, it is in the nature of the present capitalist crisis that no mediation is possible and development planning in the so-called “Third World” gives way to war.3 That the connection between integration in the global economy and warfare is not usually recognized is due to the fact that globalization today, while in essence continuing the nineteenth century imperial project, presents itself primarily as an economic program. Its first and most visible weapons are structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization, privatizations, intellectual property rights. All these policies are responsible for an immense transfer of wealth from the “colonies” to the metropoles, but they do not require territorial conquest, and thus are assumed to work by purely peaceful means.4 Military intervention too is taking new forms, often appearing under the guise of benevolent initiatives, such as “food aid” and “humanitarian relief,” or, in Latin America, the “war against drugs.”

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This type of program was imposed by the World Bank and the IMF on most African countries starting in the early 1980s, allegedly to spur economic recovery and help the African governments pay for the debts that they had contracted during the previous decade in order to finance development projects. Among the reforms it prescribes are land privatization (starting with the abolition of communal land tenure), trade liberalization (the elimination of tariffs on imported goods), the deregulation of currency transactions, the downsizing of the public sector, the de-funding of social services, and a system of controls that effectively transfers economic planning from the African governments to the World Bank and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).5 This economic restructuring was presumably meant to boost productivity, eliminate inefficiency and increase Africa’s “competitive edge” on the global market.

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They are the ones who, with their struggles, have contributed most to “valorizing” the labor of their children and communities, challenging the sexual hierarchies on which capitalism has thrived and forcing the nation state to expand investment in the reproduction of the workforce.3 They have also been the main supporters of a noncapitalist use of natural resources (lands, waters, forests) and subsistence-oriented agriculture, and therefore have stood in the way of both the full commercialization of “nature” and the destruction of the last remaining commons.4 This is why globalization in all its capitalist forms—structural adjustment, trade liberalization, low intensity warfare—is in essence a war against women, a war that is particularly devastating for women in the “Third World,” but undermines the livelihood and autonomy of proletarian women in every region of the world, including the “advanced” capitalist countries. From this it follows that the economic and social condition of women cannot be improved without a struggle against capitalist globalization and the de-legitimization of the agencies and programs that sustain capital’s global expansion, starting with the IMF and the World Bank, and WTO.

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital by Kimberly Clausing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, climate change refugee, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, fake news, floating exchange rates, full employment, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, investor state dispute settlement, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, uber lyft, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, zero-sum game

Researchers have found that, across many countries, poorer consumers consume a higher fraction of traded goods relative to non-traded services than do richer consumers, and this pattern is particularly stark for Americans.5 In the United States, tariffs take a bite out of the after-tax incomes of the poorest 20 percent of the population three times larger, in percentage terms, than they take from the top 20 percent.6 Consumers have a lot to gain from international trade, but consumers are often politically disorganized, and they are unlikely to form a vocal constituency in favor of open international trade. Instead, trade liberalization often proceeds based on other considerations. Export-oriented business interests, and globally oriented multinational companies, provide constituencies in favor of an open trading system. And policy-makers also pursue trade agreements toward political ends. Back When Tariffs Paid for Government Tariffs have played an important role in our nation’s tax history, and indeed were the primary source of revenue to the US federal government until the early twentieth century.

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Gregory Mankiw, “Why Voters Don’t Buy It When Economists Say Global Trade Is Good,” The Upshot, July 29, 2016; Edward D. Mansfield and Diana C. Mutz, “Support for Free Trade.” This political problem is daunting, but the case against protectionism remains strong. Giving up trade, or even reducing trade by instituting a 30 percent tariff or shutting down the trade-liberalizing components of international agreements, would create large costs for the US economy and US workers. In particular: Tariffs would harm consumers, with particularly harmful effects for low- or middle-income workers. Export industries would be hurt by the higher costs of intermediate products and the likely retaliatory actions of our trading partners, hurting workers in those sectors.

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The International Trade Organization itself never came into being. Instead, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) liberalized trade, and nations worked together as contracting parties to the agreement. Eventually, the GATT evolved into the World Trade Organization in 1995, after the Uruguay Round of trade liberalization. 5. This process began with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Originally the European Economic Community, the European Union was established in 1993. 6. See Max Roser, “War and Peace,” Our World in Data, 2016, https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/. 7. At a recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Xi Jinping said: “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room.

Crisis and Dollarization in Ecuador: Stability, Growth, and Social Equity by Paul Ely Beckerman, Andrés Solimano

banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, currency peg, declining real wages, disintermediation, financial intermediation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, income inequality, income per capita, labor-force participation, land reform, London Interbank Offered Rate, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, open economy, pension reform, price stability, rent-seeking, school vouchers, seigniorage, trade liberalization, women in the workforce

Inflation persisted in the range of 50 to 60 percent, and the nonfinancial public-sector deficit remained around 6 to 7 percent of GDP, despite higher oil prices at the time of the Persian Gulf War. Building on the Cordero Government’s reforms, the Borja Government undertook several 30 CRISIS AND DOLLARIZATION IN ECUADOR significant structural-adjustment initiatives, including a partial tax reform, trade liberalization, and progress toward financial-sector liberalization. In the run-up to the mid-1992 elections, however, government expenditure rose sharply, and, although the authorities maintained a relatively appreciated exchange rate, inflation persisted at high rates. In mid-1992, Sixto Durán Ballén was elected president on a platform of stabilization, liberalization, and structural reform.

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The reliance of public revenue on volatile oil earnings rather than on more stable revenue sources, together with the expenditure commitments deriving from the publicdebt burden, the essentially tenured public-sector labor force, and mandated transfers (required in many instances by revenue earmarking), made the fiscal accounts inherently vulnerable to exogenous shocks. The elected governments of the 1980s and 1990s differed ideologically, but all were persuaded of the practical need for public-sector reform. The Cordero and Borja Governments made significant advances in financial liberalization and trade liberalization, but found substantive public-sector reform difficult to achieve. The Durán Ballén Government made somewhat more progress. Its 1992 Public Budgets Law set a legal basis for mod- LONGER-TERM ORIGINS OF ECUADOR’S “PREDOLLARIZATION” CRISIS 35 ernization of the systems of formulating and implementing public budgets.

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This government had inadequate political support for anything more than caretaking. It made vigorous efforts to persuade the Con- 36 CRISIS AND DOLLARIZATION IN ECUADOR gress to enact tax reform and to advance privatization, but these efforts were largely fruitless. To increase revenue it enacted a tariff surcharge, reversing the long process of trade liberalization. Moreover, in early 1998, with the conclusion of its term close, this government had to deal with the El Niño rains and declining oil-export prices that turned out to be the onset of the predollarization crisis. The core of Ecuador’s public-finance problem was (and indeed remains) that revenue depended too heavily on volatile oil earnings, while inadequate non-oil revenue and overwhelming debt-service and payroll commitments narrowed the scope for developmental expenditure.

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin

addicted to oil, air freight, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, big-box store, BRICs, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, energy security, food miles, Ford Model T, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jevons paradox, Just-in-time delivery, low interest rates, market clearing, megacity, megaproject, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, profit maximization, reserve currency, South Sea Bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, work culture , zero-sum game

In other words, if transport costs double because of soaring fuel prices, we can calculate how much those costs raise the final selling price of the item being shipped and then express that amount as if it were a tariff. So just how high would those tariffs be? We got a glimpse of that between 2004 and 2008, when world oil prices shot up from $30 to almost $150 per barrel. Transoceanic shipping costs tripled over the period. Express that in tariff terms, and the increase offsets all the trade liberalization of the last three decades. That’s one hell of an increase. Back in 2000, when oil prices were $20 per barrel, transport costs associated with shipping cargoes across the Pacific were the equivalent of an average 3 percent US tariff rate. At $100 per barrel, transport costs are equivalent to an average tariff of 8 percent.

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Just as soaring transoceanic shipping prices will turn global cost curves on their heads, carbon pricing can induce a 180-degree shift in labor’s attitude toward environmentalism. Armed with the knowledge that a third of China’s carbon emissions comes from its export sector, US steelworkers have every reason now to be at the vanguard of those urging Congress for tougher action on carbon emissions. American labor will soon learn that what has been lost through trade liberalization can be won back through environmental protection. A carbon tariff, just like triple-digit oil prices, will soon be bringing a lot of long-lost jobs back home. [CHAPTER 7] JUST HOW BIG IS CLEVELAND? I NEVER KNEW THAT CLEVELAND WAS THAT BIG. I’m sure it is big enough for the folks who live there.

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Many people who have not seen a lunch box since middle school, or who haven’t had a callous on their hands since the time they tried to build their own backyard fence, may soon become reacquainted with both. All of a sudden, the globalizing forces of the last three decades will come to a screeching halt. While trade liberalization and technical change have flattened the world, the soaring prices for energy are going to make the world rounder again. And this smaller, rounder world is going to look more like the past than what we are accustomed to expect from the future. EATING OUT There is hardly a sector of the economy that will not be affected by these global shifts.

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent by Joseph E. Stiglitz

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carried interest, central bank independence, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, DeepMind, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global supply chain, greed is good, green new deal, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, late fees, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Peter Thiel, postindustrial economy, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, two-sided market, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, working-age population, Yochai Benkler

It’s really that simple. Anybody who believes in the law of supply and demand should understand why globalization (in the absence of government programs to ameliorate its effects) hurts low-skilled workers. The same goes for labor more generally: the US imports labor-intensive goods, and thus trade liberalization (opening up US markets to foreign goods by reducing tariffs or other trade barriers) reduces the overall demand for labor, and thereby also reduces (real) wages in equilibrium. Again, if wages don’t fall, employment will. Trade advocates similarly stress that trade increases the country’s GDP, as it takes advantage of its comparative advantage (whether a result of specialization or resource endowments), and somehow, mystically, everyone will be better off—another instance of the belief in trickle-down economics.

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TRIPS was really about increasing profits of Big Pharma and firms in a few other industries.25 It was about ensuring a flow of money from poor developing countries and emerging markets to the US.26 Not surprisingly, then, it wasn’t a balanced agreement, even within the domain of intellectual property; it didn’t recognize the intellectual property of developing countries, either that of the genetic resources that resided in their rich biodiversity that so many were working so hard to preserve, or in traditional knowledge.27 Protectionism Is Not the Answer While globalization, and especially poorly managed trade liberalization, has contributed to deindustrialization, unemployment, and inequality, Donald Trump’s protectionist policies won’t solve any of these problems. Indeed, his mindless undoing of the global rules-based system may make some of them worse. Renegotiating trade agreements will neither reduce the trade deficit nor lead to a return of manufacturing jobs.

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Another study found negative effects for growth of the US economy. Jeronim Capaldo, Alex Izurieta, and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, “Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement” (Global Development and Environment Institute working paper 16-01, Tufts University, 2016). The usual champions of trade liberalization found, perhaps not surprisingly, somewhat larger positive effects than the US government did, at least by 2030: Peter A. Petri and Michael G. Plummer (Peterson Institute for International Economics) and the World Bank both estimated that the TPP would increase annual GDP by 0.5 by 2030. See World Bank Group, Global Economic Prospects: Spillovers amid Weak Growth.

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History by David Edgerton

active measures, Arthur Marwick, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blue-collar work, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, centre right, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, company town, Corn Laws, corporate governance, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, Donald Davies, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, endogenous growth, Etonian, European colonialism, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, full employment, gentrification, imperial preference, James Dyson, knowledge economy, labour mobility, land reform, land value tax, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, packet switching, Philip Mirowski, Piper Alpha, plutocrats, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, post-truth, post-war consensus, public intellectual, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, technological determinism, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, trade liberalization, union organizing, very high income, wages for housework, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor

Imperial Germany, which did so, was seen by free traders not only as nationalistic and militaristic, but as a place where wages were low, bread was brown, and meat came from horses and dogs.7 The Conservative campaign failed. The free-trading Liberal Party won the election of 1906, fought on this issue, with a huge majority. Under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Herbert Asquith the New Liberalism set in train the development of the welfare state, and faced down the still powerful House of Lords in order to pass the People’s Budget which funded it. That is the usual story, but as we shall see, it misses out much. The 1906 election was not the end of the matter with respect to free trade. The Great War led to measures which free-trading liberals regarded with distaste. The wartime coalition, formed in 1915, when Conservatives joined the existing Liberal government, introduced what some liberals regarded as Prussian measures: conscription and some economic nationalism.

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The dominant Conservatives called for ‘Empire Economic Unity’, which meant tariffs, and quotas for cereals. Indeed, the need for protection was practically the only point their manifesto made. Their minor partners, MacDonald’s National Labour and the Liberal Nationals, were confused on this key issue. The free-trading Liberals also supported the National government. The main opposition – the Labour Party and the Lloyd George Independent Liberals – were, however, firmly in favour of free trade. Labour was categorical: The Labour Party has no confidence in any attempt to bolster up a bankrupt Capitalism by a system of tariffs.

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Most people, when they had a vote, voted not only for parties of the elite, but for members of parliament drawn from the upper reaches of society. Furthermore, politics was fundamentally about what happened in parliament and the elite public sphere, rather than a matter for the electorate. Only rarely did the electorate and electoral system give unambiguous instructions. In 1906 the electorate returned a free trade Liberal government. In 1918 the electorate endorsed a coalition, as it was to do in 1931, with protection the likely result. The 1945 general election brought a Labour majority government, with a distinct programme and parliamentary candidates. The politics of party and the politics of parliament were usually more important than the votes of the electorate.

America in the World by Robert B. Zoellick

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, classic study, Corn Laws, coronavirus, cuban missile crisis, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, energy security, European colonialism, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hypertext link, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, immigration reform, imperial preference, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, linear model of innovation, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Norbert Wiener, Paul Samuelson, public intellectual, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, Strategic Defense Initiative, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, War on Poverty

But Mahan wanted the United States to sail powerfully in Pacific waters. Mahan’s strategic vision incorporated other diplomatic elements. He wanted to boost trade, including imports as well as exports. Tariffs, Mahan wrote in 1890, were like “a modern ironclad that has heavy armor, but inferior engines and guns; mighty for defence, weak for offence.” Trade liberalization would extend American influence. He observed how Seward’s trade reciprocity treaty with Hawaii had pulled the islands into the U.S. orbit. Mahan further believed that America’s “moral influence”—its values—would gradually encourage political liberalization and indigenous republican institutions that would contribute to a more secure international order.6 In 1900, Mahan published a series of essays in The Problem of Asia.

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Therefore, Hull and his associates “agreed that we should try to secure the enactment of the next best method of reducing trade barriers, that is by bilateral trade agreements which embraced the most-favored-nation policy in its unconditional form—meaning a policy of nondiscrimination and equality of treatment.”36 When I became the U.S. trade representative in 2001, I recalled Hull’s experience. A number of countries had thwarted an effort to launch a new round of trade liberalization in the World Trade Organization. Many capitals were reluctant to devise new rules for sectors—such as services and technologies—that had become huge in the world economy. In the spirit of Hull, we decided on a strategy of “competitive liberalization”—negotiating multilaterally, regionally, and bilaterally.

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At one point in August, Clayton was ready to leave the British out of the new multilateral trading system. But the president had too many other priorities with Britain in 1947, and the United States agreed to launch GATT even with Britain’s imperial preferences.113 This first multilateral trading round, with twenty-three participants, proved that cooperation on trade liberalization was possible. The parties cut tariffs on forty-five thousand items, covering about half of world trade. The process stimulated world trade even as economies were struggling to recover and remove foreign exchange controls. Some in Congress complained about a trade “giveaway,” but the new trade diplomacy helped unleash unparalleled economic growth in the United States and the world for decades.

Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science by Dani Rodrik

airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, bank run, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bretton Woods, business cycle, butterfly effect, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collective bargaining, congestion pricing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, distributed generation, Donald Davies, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, fudge factor, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, income inequality, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, liquidity trap, loss aversion, low skilled workers, market design, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, oil shock, open economy, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, price elasticity of demand, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, public intellectual, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, risk/return, Robert Shiller, school vouchers, South Sea Bubble, spectrum auction, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, ultimatum game, University of East Anglia, unorthodox policies, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, white flight

So the initial Washington Consensus was supplemented by a burgeoning list of additional measures encompassing labor markets, financial standards, governance improvements, central banking rules, and so on.10 The economists behind the Washington Consensus forgot they were operating in an inherently second-best world. As discussed in Chapter 2, in environments where markets are subject to multiple imperfections, the usual intuition on the effects of policies can be quite misleading. Privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization can all backfire. Market restrictions of a certain sort can be desirable. Policy reforms in these environments require models that explicitly take such second-best complications into account. Consider how opening up to trade—one of the key items of the Washington Consensus—was supposed to work.

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We also showed that there was no strong or uniform evidence one way or another. After circulating and presenting the paper, I got two kinds of reactions. Committed advocates of the Washington Consensus thought I was muddying the waters and undermining the good cause of free trade. But many others expressed their appreciation, complaining that the push for trade liberalization had gone much beyond what economic research was able to support. The second type of reaction was unexpected, since it came from people who had not taken a public stance. They had chosen not to have their voices heard, despite their skepticism. As a result, the public message was not representative of the profession as a whole, where views were, in fact, considerably more hedged.

The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy by Richard Duncan

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bretton Woods, business cycle, currency manipulation / currency intervention, debt deflation, deindustrialization, diversification, diversified portfolio, fiat currency, financial innovation, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, inflation targeting, It's morning again in America, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, reserve currency, risk free rate, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, special drawing rights, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization

Any regulatory action that damages the interest of the banks—regardless of how justified—has the potential to inflict significant, even fatal, harm on the economy. Until these conflicts are resolved, the banking industry will continue to be a dangerously destabilizing factor within the U.S. economy. Global Imbalances: Still Unresolved In the post–Bretton Woods era, trade liberalization, cross-border capital flows, and currency manipulation combined to produce widespread global imbalances that have destabilized the world economy. In the past, trade between nations had to balance because deficits had to be paid for with gold. Since 1971, however, it has become possible to finance large trade deficits with debt denominated in fiat money.

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The United States bears the greatest responsibility for allowing the global imbalances to develop. First, President Richard Nixon destroyed the Bretton Woods international monetary system, which had been designed to ensure that international trade did balance. Later, the United States promoted trade liberalization and cross-border capital flows with no concern for the very large U.S. trade deficits that emerged as a result. Finally, it failed to act when many of its trading partners blatantly manipulated the value of their currencies in a way that prevented the trade imbalances from correcting. When the U.S. credit bubble began in earnest in the 1980s, other countries expanded their industrial capacity to satisfy the United States’ rapidly expanding debt-financed demand.

Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order by Bruno Maçães

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Admiral Zheng, autonomous vehicles, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, cloud computing, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, Donald Trump, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global supply chain, global value chain, high-speed rail, industrial cluster, industrial robot, Internet of things, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, one-China policy, Pearl River Delta, public intellectual, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, trade liberalization, trade route, zero-sum game

The orderly flow of economic factors in both countries “will significantly improve the resource allocation efficiency and bring into full play the comparative advantage of each country.”14 China and Pakistan are expected to strengthen cooperation in trade and industrial areas, expand bilateral economic and trade relations, and enhance the level of bilateral trade liberalization. They should cooperate in key areas, enhance the effectiveness of cooperation and strive to achieve synchronization, coordination and reciprocity of economic development. Specific sectors to be actively promoted include textiles, the production of parts and components for industry, and agriculture.

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The global economy has a Tianxia feel. When intermediate inputs tend to cross borders many times, even small tariffs and border bottlenecks have a cumulative effect, and protective measures against imports increase the costs of production and reduce a country’s export competitiveness. These are all good arguments for trade liberalization—and it should therefore not surprise us that China has started vocally to defend the removal of barriers to cross-border flows of goods and services—but consider what happens to a country’s ability to organize production along the most efficient lines. If goods are produced entirely in one country, that country has full control over the whole process.

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, household responsibility system, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, tulip mania, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

The growth of emerging-market countries and their export markets has cut America’s total share of the global merchandise export market in half over the past sixty years, from 28 percent to about 14 percent.20 In other words, many more countries have embraced capitalism in recent years, and most of the world’s international financial institutions reflect the change.21 Mercantilism is dead, but its influence continues. Governments are again intervening in their economies to promote declared national interests, and they have found subtler and more effective ways to practice protectionism. Even states considered among the world’s foremost advocates of trade liberalization and free-market capitalism refuse to yield ground on especially sensitive trade issues. The European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, continues to use import tariffs to protect its farmers against products that European consumers could buy for less from the developing world.22 The EU’s agricultural policies are in some ways a legacy of extreme wartime food shortages.

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In other words, the conflict had enormous and lasting consequences for international politics and the global economy. The Second Wave—Fast-Emerging Markets The second wave of state capitalism made landfall during the 1980s and early 1990s with the liberalization and economic expansion of the so-called emerging markets—China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Turkey, and others. Trade liberalization produced a surge in consumer demand in dozens of countries, the global economy has since gained hundreds of millions of new participants, and most of the emerging markets have a history of relatively direct state involvement in economic decision making. China and Russia depended for decades on command economies.

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, company town, computer age, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, discovery of DNA, Doha Development Round, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, gentrification, George Akerlof, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global supply chain, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, job automation, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, urban sprawl, very high income, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, white flight, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population

The big insight of modern economics was that trade in goods and services was effectively a substitute for the free movement of labor and capital: when China sells labor-intensive goods to the United States, it increases the demand for China’s labor and lowers the demand for that in America, raising wages there and lowering them here. Trade liberalization moves the wages of unskilled labor in the two countries closer together. And the wages of our workers is likely to go down more than theirs is likely to go up. While economists have long debated the relative importance of this effect—compared with others that increase income inequality—there is a growing consensus that today the impact of trade on wages and inequality can be significant.

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His party’s new-found commitment to fiscal discipline—in the form of insisting on low taxes for the rich while slashing services for the poor—is the height of hypocrisy. There are all kinds of excuses for inequality. Some say it’s beyond our control, pointing to market forces like globalization, trade liberalization, the technological revolution, the “rise of the rest.” Others assert that doing anything about it would make us all worse off, by stifling our already sputtering economic engine. These are self-serving, ignorant falsehoods. Market forces don’t exist in a vacuum—we shape them. Other countries, like fast-growing Brazil, have shaped them in ways that have lowered inequality while creating more opportunity and higher growth.

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They also extended the policy of lowering taxes at the top, to the point where today, the richest 1 percent of Americans pay only around 15 percent of their income in taxes, far lower than those with more moderate incomes. Reagan’s breaking of the air-traffic controllers’ strike is often cited as a critical juncture in the weakening of unions, one of the factors explaining why workers have done so badly in recent decades. But there are other factors as well. Reagan promoted trade liberalization, and some of the growth in inequality is due to globalization and the replacement of semiskilled jobs with new technologies and outsourced labor. Some of the increase in inequality common to both Europe and America can be ascribed to that. But what’s different about America is the remarkable growth in incomes of the very top—especially the top 0.1 percent.

Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century by Torben Iversen, David Soskice

Andrei Shleifer, assortative mating, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, centre right, clean tech, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, confounding variable, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, full employment, general purpose technology, gentrification, Gini coefficient, hiring and firing, implied volatility, income inequality, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, invisible hand, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, means of production, middle-income trap, mirror neurons, mittelstand, Network effects, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, passive investing, precariat, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, rent-seeking, RFID, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Silicon Valley, smart cities, speech recognition, tacit knowledge, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the strength of weak ties, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban decay, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, World Values Survey, young professional, zero-sum game

“Horizontal Depth: A New Database on the Content of Preferential Trade Agreements.” Policy Research Working Paper, No. 7981. World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/26148. License: CC BY 3.0 IGO. Across-the-board trade liberalization, although it is no longer sufficient to guarantee competition, makes it harder for companies to establish entrenched monopolistic or oligopolistic market positions. Trade liberalization is a global phenomenon, as illustrated in figure 4.6, but the agreements with the most extensive free-trade provisions and greatest impact have been between advanced democracies, especially in Europe (the creation of the internal market) and in North America (NAFTA).

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We do believe that the homophobic, sexist, and generally intolerant views associated with populism are incompatible with the way modern cities work. But rarely are such policies adopted and implemented in a manner that seriously interfere with the live-and-let-live ethos of modern urban life. The same is generally true of more radical proposals to restrict international trade. Trade liberalization has been revisited politically, but, on the whole, open world trade has not been seriously threatened. It is true that Brexit was a blow to the principle of a Europe without borders, but few seriously think that the UK will shut its borders to trade and investment with the EU, or vice versa.

A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption by Steven Hiatt; John Perkins

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, airline deregulation, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bob Geldof, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate personhood, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial independence, full employment, global village, high net worth, land bank, land reform, large denomination, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, statistical model, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, Tax Reform Act of 1986, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

While studying, I linked up with a network of campaigners associated with Oxfam 2000, a British nongovernmental organization, and started research into how the financial resources of many of the world’s poorest countries drain away into secret banking accounts. This research continued after my graduation, and, while working in India in the early 1980s, I became increasingly aware that the capital market and trade liberalization programs promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were making it far easier for wealthy people and corporations to evade taxes. Tax havens were playing a pivotal, but hidden, role in transferring money illicitly into secret bank accounts and offshore trusts—not just benefiting the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals and companies but also sapping the prospects for economic development in the world’s poorest nations.

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Now, on the market side, cheap imports of tires came in, and our business competed directly with brand-new tires. Our business was in tire retreading. When old tires get chewed up and abraded, we retreaded them and made them look and function like new. Cheap imported tires came in because of trade liberalization. We lost market share, and we couldn’t raise our prices as much as we should have. Even without the imports, the market was already very competitive here. There were many tire retreading companies—a few big ones, and many small ones. Especially after we joined the WTO in 1995–96, the industry started to have real problems.

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Nowhere is this more evident than in Bolivia, Argentina, and Venezuela, whose economies all have been decimated under previous neoliberal governments. . . . Even Costa Rica, Peru, and Mexico, traditionally neoliberal strongholds, have experienced presidential elections almost entirely dominated by debate over trade liberalization.9 The global justice movement has also matured. For example, under the influence of unions such as Unite! and the Service Employees International Union, organized labor in the U.S. changed from first supporting corporate globalization to then supporting only instances that helped U.S. workers and then to a broader opposition grounded in the reality of the shared sacrifice of workers everywhere.

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American ideology, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Bretton Woods, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, defense in depth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, George Floyd, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, positional goods, post-truth, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, special economic zone, TikTok, trade liberalization, transaction costs, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, zero-sum game

If China is out of the GATT . . . not only will this daunt the universality of the global multilateral trade system, even China’s thorough implementation of the plan of trade liberalization in the APEC region will be affected. So long as China’s GATT contracting party status is not resumed, it would be very difficult for China to commit itself to the implementation of the Uruguay Round agreements, and the implementation of the APEC regional trade liberalization program would be affected adversely.78 If China could not get direct entry into the GATT/WTO, it hoped to at least lower the bar to entry by encouraging APEC members to support the principle that those APEC states designated as “developing countries” should also be designated as such within the GATT/WTO.

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Chinese diplomats also worked to wield the organization to inoculate China against American power (especially economic sanctions), all while simultaneously using the platform APEC provided to reassure China’s neighbors that Beijing was not a threat. As a partial consequence, APEC has been ineffective in promoting trade liberalization and generally irrelevant during the Asian Financial Crisis and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Alternative Explanations What might explain China’s participation in APEC? China does not appear to have been a sincere participant in the organization. APEC was not particularly “thick.”

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58 China would not stand idly by as Washington rewrote the economic, political, and military rules of Asia through APEC. After the United States sought to elevate APEC at Seattle, Wang observed that “US strategic intent became quite obvious. Its ‘community’ concept encompasses three pillars: namely economic integration based on trade liberalization; multilateral security mechanisms dominated by the United States; and democratization with American values as the standard.”59 He continued, “The establishment of such a ‘community’ and its vision, of course . . . is something that cannot be accepted by China.”60 And so China sought to prevent the emergence of such a community by weakening APEC itself.

The Fair Trade Scandal: Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich by Ndongo Sylla

"there is no alternative" (TINA), British Empire, carbon footprint, corporate social responsibility, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, degrowth, Doha Development Round, Food sovereignty, global value chain, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, labour mobility, land reform, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open economy, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, selection bias, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Booth, Philip (2008) ‘The Economics of Fair Trade: A Christian Perspective’, Institute of Economic Affairs (www.iea.org.uk, accessed August 2013). Boris, Jean-Pierre (2005) Commerce inéquitable: le roman noir des matières premières [Unfair Trade: The Dark Story of Raw Materials] (Paris: Hachette littératures). Bouët, Antoine (2008) ‘The Expected Benefits of Trade Liberalization for World Income and Development. Opening the “Black Box” of Global Trade Modelling’, Food Policy Review 8 (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute). Bowes, John (2011) The Fair Trade Revolution (London: Pluto Press). Brenner, Robert (1977) ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism’, New Left Review 104: 25–92.

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Understanding the “Coffee Crisis”’, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Trade Briefing Paper no. 16, May, Washington, DC: Cato Institute. Brown, Michael B. (1993) Fair Trade: Reform and Realities in the International Trading System (London: Zed Books). Bureau, Jean-Christophe, Jean, Sebastian and Matthews, Alan (2006) ‘The Consequences of Agricultural Trade Liberalization for Developing Countries: Distinguishing Between Genuine Benefits and False Hopes’, World Trade Review 5(2): 225–49. Chang, Ha-Joon (2002) Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem Press). 164 Sylla T02779 01 text 164 28/11/2013 13:04 bibliography Chang, Ha-Joon (2008) Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (New York: Bloomsbury Press).

The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes by Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, David Ashton

active measures, affirmative action, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, classic study, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Dutch auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, job automation, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market design, meritocracy, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, post-industrial society, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, tacit knowledge, tech worker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, working poor, zero-sum game

David Ricardo, a nineteenth-century English political economist, argued the case for free trade, believing that rich and poor nations alike could gain from trading with each other as long as they specialized in products for which they had an advantage. The rise of the global knowledge economy was believed to remove much of the source of conflict and strife between nations. Trade liberalization was presented as a “win-win” opportunity for emerging and affluent nations. The territorial disputes that drove nations to war in pursuit of land and material wealth became less important in terms of power, privilege, and wealth. According to Richard Rosecrance of Harvard’s Kennedy School: “In the past, material forces were dominant in national growth, prestige, and power; now products of the mind take precedence.

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Quality: From Local Adaptation to Global Markets We have already seen how Western companies have played a key role in the transfer of knowledge in China and India. The opening up of new markets to more than 2 billion potential consumers led them to follow the market. Some of these companies had a presence across Asia decades before the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995, but trade liberalization in both China and India proved irresistible to many other companies.4 American household brands where among those quick to recognize how the extension of global trade gave them access to new consumer markets and gave them the potential to revolutionize their global operations. This will be examined in a later chapter, but first we need to investigate the role of these companies in moving price competition up the value chain by achieving global quality standards in low-cost locations.

Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together by Ian Goldin, Tom Lee-Devlin

15-minute city, 1960s counterculture, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brixton riot, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, cloud computing, congestion charging, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, data science, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Enrique Peñalosa, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, future of work, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Haight Ashbury, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, income per capita, Induced demand, industrial robot, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour mobility, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, Pearl River Delta, race to the bottom, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, Salesforce, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, smart meter, Snow Crash, social distancing, special economic zone, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It Divided Nations: Why Global Governance is Failing, and What We Can Do About It Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped our World and Will Define Our Future Globalization for Development The Case for Aid The Economics of Sustainable Development Economic Reform and Trade Modelling Economy-wide Reforms Trade Liberalization: Global Economic Implications Open Economies Trade: What’s at Stake? The Future of Agriculture Lessons from Brazil Making Race: The Politics and Economics of Racial Identity Contents List of Figures Preface 1 Introduction 2 Engines of Progress 3 Levelling Up 4 Divided Cities 5 Remote Work: The Threat to Cities 6 Cities, Cyberspace and the Future of Community 7 Beyond the Rich World 8 The Spectre of Disease 9 A Climate of Peril 10 Conclusion: Better Together Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index List of Figures Figure 1: More than half the world’s population now lives in cities Figure 2: Income dispersion across cities varies from country to country Figure 3: Rising sea levels will leave many cities under water Preface We live in tumultuous times.

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Index abortion here abstract mathematics here Achaemenid Empire here Adani, Gautam here agglomeration effects here agriculture here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and carbon emissions here and disease here, here productivity here, here vertical farming here Ahmedabad here air-conditioning here, here airports here, here, here, here Albuquerque here Alexandria here Allen, Paul here Allen, Thomas here Altrincham here Amazon here, here, here Amazon rainforest here Amsterdam here Anatolia here Anderson, Benedict here Anheuser-Busch here antibiotics here, here, here Antonine Plague here Anyang here apartment conversions here, here Apple here, here, here Aristotle here Arizona State University here Arlington here Assyrian merchants here Athens, Ancient here, here, here, here, here, here Atlanta here, here Austin here, here, here automation here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here axial precession here Baghdad, House of Wisdom here Baltimore here, here Bangalore here, here Bangkok here Bangladesh here, here, here, here Barlow, John Perry here Bauhaus here Beijing here, here Belmar redevelopment here Berkes, Enrico here Berlin here, here, here Berlin Wall, fall of here Bezos, Jeff here biological weapons here ‘biophilia’ here biospheres here bird flu here Birmingham here, here Black Death here, here, here Blake, William here Bloom, Nick here BMW here ‘bobo’ (bourgeois bohemian) here, here, here Boccaccio, Giovanni here Boeing here, here, here Bogota here Bologna here Bonfire of the Vanities here Borneo here Boston here, here, here Boston University here, here Brand, Stewart here Brazil here, here Brexit here, here, here Bristol here Britain broadcasting here deindustrialization here education here enclosure movement here foreign aid here high-speed rail here, here house prices here immigration here industrialization here, here infant mortality here ‘levelling up’ here life expectancy here mayoralties here per capita emissions here per capita incomes here remote working here social housing here Brixton riots here broadcasting here Bronze Age here, here, here, here bronze, and shift to iron here Brooks, David here Brynjolfsson, Eric here Burgess, Ernest here bushmeat here, here Byzantine Empire, fall of here Cairncross, Frances here Cairo here calendar, invention of here Cambridge, Massachusetts here Cambridge University here canals here, here, here ‘cancel culture’ here Cape Town here Catholic Church here C40 Cities partnership here Chadwick, Edwin here Chang’an (Xi’an) here, here, here, here Charles, Prince of Wales here charter cities here Chengdu here Chiba here Chicago here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here childbirth, average age at here childcare here, here, here, here, here China here ancient here, here, here, here call-centre workers here cereal production here civil strife here and Covid-19 pandemic here Cultural Revolution here definition of cities here economic liberalization here entry into WTO here Household Responsibility System here hukou system here One Child Policy here Open Coastal Cities here per capita emissions here rapid ageing here Special Economic Zones here technology here urbanization here China Towns here Chinese Communist Party here cholera here, here, here, here Chongqing here cities, definition of here Citigroup here city networks here civil wars here Cleveland here, here, here, here climate change here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here coastal cities here, here, here, here commuting here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Concentric Zone Model here Confucius here conspiracy theories here Constantinople here, here containerization here, here Copenhagen here, here Corinth here Cornwall here corruption here Coventry here, here covid-19 see pandemics crime rates here ‘cyberbalkanization’ here cycling here, here, here, here Damascus here Dark Ages here, here data science here de Soto, Hernando here deforestation here, here, here, here Delhi here Dell here Delphic oracle here democracy here, here, here Democratic Republic of Congo here, here, here, here, here, here Deng Xiaoping here dengue fever here Denmark here, here Detroit here, here, here, here, here, here, here Dhaka here, here, here, here, here Dharavi here Diana, Princess of Wales here diasporas here, here Dickens, Charles here district heating systems here Dresden here drought here, here, here, here, here, here, here Drucker, Peter here dual-income households here, here Dubai here, here, here Dunbar, Kevin here Düsseldorf here East Antarctic ice sheet here East China Sea here, here Easterly, William here Eastern Mediterranean here, here, here Ebola here Edinburgh here education here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here higher education here, here, here, here; see also universities Japanese school system here Egypt here, here Ancient here, here, here, here Ehrenhalt, Alan here electric vehicles (EVs) here Engels, Friedrich here Enlightenment here Epic of Gilgamesh here Erfurt here Ethiopia here, here Euripides here European Enlightenment here exchange rates here Facebook here, here, here fake news here famine here, here fertility rates here, here, here ‘15-minute city’ principle here Fischer, Claude here Fleming, Alexander here flooding here, here, here, here, here, here, here Florida, Richard here, here food shortages here Ford, Henry here, here foreign aid here fossil fuels here, here France here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Frankfurt here Franklin, Benjamin here Friedman, Thomas here, here Fryer, Roland here Fukuoka here, here Gaetani, Ruben here Galileo Galilei here Ganges River here Garden Cities here Garden of Eden here Gates, Bill here, here gay community here General Electric here General Motors here genetic engineering here gentrification here, here, here, here, here George, Andy here Germany here, here, here, here, here, here Gingrich, Newt here glaciers here Glasgow here Glass, Ruth here global financial crisis here, here, here global population, size of here globalization here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Goldstein, Amy here Google here, here, here Goos, Maarten here Grant, Adam here Great Depression here, here Greece, Ancient here, here, here, here, here Griffith Observatory here Gropius, Walter here Gruen, Victor here Gulf Stream here Haiti here Hamburg here Hanseatic League here, here Harappa here, here Harry, Prince here Harvard University here hate speech here Haussmann, Baron here, here Hawaii here Hazlitt, William here healthcare here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here heatwaves here, here Hebei here Heckscher, Eli here Herodotus here Himalayas here Hippocrates here Hippodamus here Hittite Empire here HIV here, here Ho Chi Minh City here Holocene here, here, here homophily here Hong Kong here house prices here, here, here, here, here, here, here Houston here, here, here Howard, Ebenezer here Hudson River here Hugo, Victor here Hume, David here Hurricane Katrina here hybrid working, see remote and hybrid working ice melting here, here import substitution industrialization here InBev here India here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here fertility rates here Indonesia here, here Indus River here Indus Valley here, here, here inequality here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here infant and child mortality here, here, here, here influenza here, here, here ‘information cocoons’ here Instagram here internet here, here, here, here, here, here invention here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here irrigation here, here, here, here Italy here Jacobs, Jane here, here, here Jakarta here, here James, Sheila here Japan here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here post-war development here schooling system here Jenner, Edward here Jesus Christ here Jobs, Steve here jobs apprenticeships here ‘lousy’ and ‘lovely’ here tradeable and non-tradeable here Justinian Plague here Kashmir here Kenya here Kinshasa here, here Kish here knowledge workers here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Koch, Robert here Kolkata here Korean War here Krugman, Paul here Kushim Tablet here Lagash here Lagos here, here, here, here, here, here, here Lahore here land titling programmes here Las Vegas here Latin language here Lee Kuan Yew here, here Leeds here, here Leicester here Leipzig here, here, here, here Letchworth here life expectancy here, here, here, here, here, here Liverpool here, here Ljubljana here London here, here, here, here, here, here, here bike lanes here Canary Wharf here, here Chelsea here, here, here China Town here cholera outbreaks here City of London here, here coffeehouses here and Covid-19 pandemic here financial services here gentrification here, here, here Great Stink here, here heatwaves here, here house prices here, here hybrid working here, here immigration here, here incomes here, here mayoralty here migration into inner London here population growth here, here, here poverty here, here public transport here, here, here slum housing here social housing here suburbanization here Los Angeles here, here, here, here Louisville here Luoyang here Luther, Martin here Luton Airport here Luxembourg here, here Lyon here McDonald’s here McDonnell Douglas here McLuhan, Marshall here Madagascar here malaria here, here, here, here Malaysia here Mali here malls, reinvention of here Manchester here, here, here, here, here, here, here Manila here Manning, Alan here Markle, Meghan here marriage here Marshall, Alfred here Marshall, Tim here Marx, Karl here Maya here, here measles here, here, here Meetup here mega regions here Mekong River here Memphis, Egypt here, here Mesoamerica here, here Mesopotamia here, here, here metallurgy here metaverse here methane here, here Mexico here Miami here, here, here microbiology here Microsoft here, here, here middle class, rise of here migration policy here millennial generation here Milwaukee here, here Minoan civilization here Mistry, Rohinton here MIT here MMR vaccine here ‘modernization’ theory here Mohenjo-Daro here, here Moretti, Enrico here, here mortality rates here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here motor car, invention of here Moynihan, Daniel here Mumbai here, here Mumford, Lewis here, here, here, here Munich here, here Mycenaean civilization here Nagoya here, here Nairobi here Nashville here National Landing, Arlington here Natural History Museum here natural resource exports here Nestlé here Netherlands here network effects here New Economics Foundation here New Orleans here, here New York here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here carbon emissions here and Covid-19 pandemic here gentrification here, here housing here, here, here incomes here, here Manhattan here, here, here, here, here population growth here, here and rising sea levels here slum housing here suburbanization here, here subway here waste and recycling here New York Central Railroad here New York World Fair here Newcastle here Nextdoor here Niger here Nigeria here, here, here, here Nilles, Jack here, here Nipah virus here Norway here, here Nottingham here Novgorod here ocean and air circulation here office rental and sales prices here Ohlin, Bertil here Oldenburg, Ray here online deliveries here OpenTable here Osaka here, here Oslo here Ottoman Empire here Oxford, population of here Oxford University here Pacific Belt Zone here Padua here Pakistan here, here, here pandemics here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and zoonotic diseases here paramyxovirus here Paris here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Paris Conference (2015) here Park Chung-hee, General here parks here Pasteur, Louis here Pearl River Delta here, here Peñalosa, Enrique here per capita income here Philadelphia here Philippines here, here Phoenix here, here Pixar here plague here, here, here, here Plato here plough, invention of here pollution here, here, here, here air pollution here, here, here, here population growth here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here PORTL here potter’s wheel, invention of here printing press here, here productivity here, here, here, here, here agricultural here, here Protestantism, rise of here public transport here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Putnam, Robert here, here quarantine here railways here, here, here, here, here high-speed rail here, here, here Ralston Purina here Reagan, Ronald here recycling here, here religion here remote and hybrid working here, here, here, here Renaissance Florence here, here, here renewable energy here, here Republic of Letters here République des Hyper Voisins here ‘resource curse’ here Rheingold, Howard here Ricardo, David here Rio de Janeiro here Riverside, San Francisco here robotics here Rockefeller, John D. here Roman Empire here, here, here Rome, Ancient here, here, here, here, here, here Romer, Paul here Rotterdam here Rousseau, Jean-Jacques here, here Sahel here, here sailboat, invention of here St Augustine here St Louis here, here, here Salesforce here San Diego here San Francisco here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here gentrification here, here hybrid working here, here San Francisco Bay Area here, here, here Santa Fe here São Paulo here Savonarola, Girolamo here Scientific American here Scott, Emmett J. here sea levels, rising here, here, here Seattle here, here, here, here, here, here Second Opium War here Seneca here Seoul here Shanghai here, here, here, here, here Shantou here Sheffield here, here, here Shen Nung here Shenzhen here, here Siemens here Silk Roads here, here Sinclair, Upton here Singapore here, here, here, here Slater, Samuel here smallpox here, here Smith, Adam here, here Snow, John here social capital here social housing here, here social media here, here, here, here, here Socrates here solar panels here South Africa here South Korea here, here, here, here, here, here Southdale Center here specialization here, here, here, here, here, here Spengler, Oswald here Starbucks here Stephenson, Neal here Stewart, General William here Stuttgart here Sub-Saharan Africa here subsidiarity principle here suburbanization here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Sunstein, Cass here Sweden here, here Sydney here, here, here, here, here, here Syrian refugees here, here Taiwan here Tanzania here telegraph here Tempest, Kae here Thailand here Thames River here, here Thatcher, Margaret here, here, here ‘third places’ here Tianjin here Tocqueville, Alexis de here Toffler, Alvin here Tokyo here, here, here, here trade liberalization here trade routes here Trump, Donald here, here tuberculosis here, here, here Twain, Mark here Twitter here, here typhoid here, here typhus here, here Uber here Uganda here Ukraine here, here Umayyad Caliphate here unemployment here, here United Nations here, here United States anti-global populism here anti-trust regulation and industrial consolidation here anxiety and depression here broadcasting here car registrations here cost of education here decline in trust here deindustrialization here Gilded Age here Great Migration here house prices here, here immigration here industrialization here inequality here labour mobility here ‘magnet schools’ here parking spaces here patent filings here per capita emissions here, here per capita incomes here remote working here, here, here return on equity here Rust Belt here schools funding here slavery here socioeconomic mobility here suburbanization here tax revenues here US Federal Housing Authority here US General Social Survey here US Trade Adjustment Assistance Program here universities here, here, here University College London here University of Texas here university-educated professionals here Ur here urban heat island effect here urbanism, subcultural theory of here Uruk here, here, here, here, here vaccines here, here Van Alstyne, Marshall here Vancouver here Venice here, here Vienna here, here Vietnam here voluntary associations here, here Wakefield, Andrew here walking here, here, here Wall Street here Warwick University here Washington University here WELL, The here Welwyn Garden City here wheel, invention of here wildfires here, here William the Conqueror here Wilson, Edward Osborne here, here Wilson, William here World Bank here, here World Health organization here World Trade Organization here World Wide Web here writing, invention of here Wuhan here, here Xiamen here Yangtze River here, here Yangtze River Delta here yellow fever here Yellow River here, here Yersinia pestis here Yokohama here YouTube here, here Yu the Great here Zhuhai here Zoom here Zoroastrianism here BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc This electronic edition first published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Ian Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin 2023 Ian Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work All rights reserved.

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies by Judith Stein

1960s counterculture, accelerated depreciation, activist lawyer, affirmative action, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, desegregation, do well by doing good, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial deregulation, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, intermodal, invisible hand, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Martin Wolf, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, post-industrial society, post-oil, price mechanism, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, three-martini lunch, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, working poor, Yom Kippur War

Connally and Nixon, who had neither institutional nor ideological loyalties, were agnostic. Both just wanted to get the job done— reverse the balance of payments, produce prosperity, and reduce unemployment. The bold action, especially the temporary border tax, was the stick to get the Europeans to accept a big shift in exchange rates, trade liberalization, and more help on defense costs. Although publicly the Japanese condemned Nixon’s “shock,” privately government officials acknowledged that America’s trade deficit with Japan was unacceptable and that the president had “in effect ‘lanced the boil’ without singling out Japan as culprit.”87 In December, Japan did revalue the yen by nearly 17 percent, more than any other nation, although movement on trade was snail-paced.

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Henry Owen told Carter that “others will look to you to speak to the common interest, to the need for according it priority over more parochial concerns, and to the US willingness to play its full part in mutually reinforcing actions to this end.”69 Those parochial concerns were national interests, like the specialty steel industry. Although Owen thought that the price was worth paying, he understood that it was a price. This was not simply an American conclusion. Two British scholars in 1976 wrote that “postwar trade liberalization has been a beneficial exercise for America’s trade partners, and … if any country could be said to have ‘lost’ within our given time horizon it was the United States itself.”70 But as many more industries were threatened by imports, American elites could not avoid responding to “parochial” industrialists and union leaders.

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The new financial order departed from the gold exchange standard in three fundamental ways: 1) Pegged exchange rates became adjustable, subject to special agreements. 2) Capital controls were permitted to limit the volatility of international capital flows. 3) The IMF could monitor national economic policies and extend balance of payment financing to countries at risk. 22. The British wanted to complement trade liberalization with full employment policies and escape clauses to protect economies from balance of payments pressures and deflation. Instead, the GATT reflected the internationalists in the State Department and took little consideration of domestic concerns. Nitsan Chorev, Remaking U.S. Trade Policy: From Protectionism to Globalization (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007), 50–53. 23.

Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration by Kent E. Calder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, air freight, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, cloud computing, colonial rule, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, energy transition, European colonialism, export processing zone, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, geopolitical risk, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial cluster, industrial robot, interest rate swap, intermodal, Internet of things, invention of movable type, inventory management, John Markoff, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, smart grid, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, supply-chain management, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, trade route, transcontinental railway, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, zero-sum game

Europe’s steady march toward economic integration, from the Treaty of Rome (1957) to Maastricht (1992) and the advent of the common currency (1999), naturally encouraged such logistical advances as well. The rich geography of European transport, involving complex transfers among rail, road, river, and sometimes air, made intermodal transport innovation a high priority. Digitalization has synergistically amplified the potential efficiency gains available through trade liberalization. These gains showed up first within the European Community early in the twenty-first century. They spawned the dynamic expansion of new logistics providers such as Deutsche Post DHL, formed by Deutsche Post’s acquisition of DHL in 2002 and Airborne Express in 2003. By 2013 this postal-based European firm was drawing 53 percent of its total revenue from logistics alone.41 China is the world’s largest manufacturer and naturally, like other large manufacturers such as Germany, is preoccupied with improving transporta- The Logic of Integration 87 tion efficiencies for physical goods.

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Third, NATO’s expansion mutes the ambivalence of the United States about expanding Sino-European ties, due to the felicitous impact that such ties have on NATO’s deterrence capabilities vis-à-vis Russia. Rising Chinese Trade and Investment in Europe The deepening Sino-European relationship flows both from developments within China as well as the historic changes in Europe outlined above. On the trade side, China’s explosive growth of the past four decades, coupled with a degree of trade liberalization after China joined the WTO in December 2001, have naturally made China a larger and larger market for European firms, as indicated in Figure 8.1. The pace of expansion in trade reliance on China has flattened since 2010, however, as China’s growth has slackened and penetrating the Chinese market has grown more difficult, for a variety of reasons.

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Yet they now face increasing challenge in maintaining both prosperity and stability within a changing, increasingly mobile Chinese society, ever more interdependent with the world, that features both a rising middle class and growing economic inequality. The BRI, it is argued, helps to sustain the role of established political institutions and industries, therefore serving a central and predictable foreign policy function under President Xi Jinping. How financial or trade liberalization might impact the stability of this system is a critical uncertainty that will profoundly shape China’s—and Eurasia’s—future. Shadows and Critical Uncertainties 205 Predictable shadows on the Eurasian future include demographic change (the graying of Asian society), globalization, ethno-religious conflict, weapons of mass destruction, and possible conflict over natural resources, especially under high-growth scenarios.

Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, William Greider

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, carried interest, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Exxon Valdez, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, It's morning again in America, John Meriwether, junk bonds, kremlinology, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, McMansion, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, money market fund, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, payday loans, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, wage slave, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working poor, Y2K

The former Treasury Secretary, now executive co-chair of Citigroup, captured the party’s allegiance in the 1990s as principal architect of Bill Clinton’s governing strategy, the conservative approach known as “Rubinomics” (or less often “Clintonomics”). Balancing the budget and aggressively pushing trade liberalization went hard against liberal intentions and the party’s working-class base. But when Clinton’s second term ended in booming prosperity, full employment and rising wages, most Democrats told themselves, Listen to Bob Rubin and good things happen. So it’s a big deal when Robert Rubin changes the subject and begins to talk about income inequality as “a deeply troubling fact of American economic life” that threatens the trading system, even the stability of “capitalist, democratic society.”

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Middle-class wages fall at the top, but the bottom does not rise as rapidly as it should. “But it’s a complicated question,” Rubin responds. Improving the distribution of incomes in poorer countries “is in everybody’s interest,” he agrees. “On the other hand, I’ve had exposure to people who make that argument, and I think they make it as a way to prevent trade liberalization. ... The one hope some of these countries have to take people out of abject poverty is that their labor-cost advantage will result in a shift of production to their countries. ... Would you say the people of Sri Lanka have to stay in abject poverty to keep that from happening?” Labor rights, I counter, do not prevent the very poorest countries from developing on the advantage of their cheap labor, but reform would require all developing countries to operate so that wage levels can rise proportionate to the economy’s rising productivity and profit, however that is measured.

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

accelerated depreciation, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, borderless world, business logic, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, deskilling, digital divide, ending welfare as we know it, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Myron Scholes, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, post-industrial society, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, rent control, Robert Solow, shareholder value, short selling, Skype, structural adjustment programs, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Job security has always been low in developing countries, but the share of insecure jobs in the so-called ‘informal sector’ – the collection of unregistered firms which do not pay taxes or observe laws, including those providing job security – has increased in many developing countries during the period, due to premature trade liberalization that destroyed a lot of secure ‘formal’ jobs in their industries. In the rich countries, job insecurity increased during the 1980s too, due to rising (compared to the 1950s–70s) unemployment, which was in large part a result of restrictive macroeconomic policies that put inflation control above everything else.

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Financial deregulation has created huge opportunities for speculative gains as well as astronomical paycheques for top managers and financiers (see Things 2 and 22). Deregulation in other areas has also allowed companies to make bigger profits, not least because they were more able to exploit their monopoly powers, more freely pollute the environment and more readily sack workers. Increased trade liberalization and increased foreign investment – or at least the threat of them – have also put downward pressure on wages. As a result, income inequality has increased in most rich countries. For example, according to the ILO (International Labour Organization) report The World of Work 2008, of the twenty advanced economies for which data was available, between 1990 and 2000 income inequality rose in sixteen countries, with only Switzerland among the remaining four experiencing a significant fall.1 During this period, income inequality in the US, already by far the highest in the rich world, rose to a level comparable to that of some Latin American countries such as Uruguay and Venezuela.

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It by Steven Brill

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset allocation, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, electricity market, ending welfare as we know it, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, future of work, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, immigration reform, income inequality, invention of radio, job automation, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paper trading, Paris climate accords, performance metric, post-work, Potemkin village, Powell Memorandum, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, Ralph Nader, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stock buybacks, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, telemarketer, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

There were some holdouts, particularly the longshoremen’s union, whose workers unloaded the ships bringing in the growing imports of textiles, footwear, machine tools, appliances, consumer electronics, cars, and other goods. However, by 1970—the year before the U.S. would fall into what would become a perpetual and growing trade deficit—the unions’ position had jelled into outright opposition to the Kennedy Round of trade liberalization. In May 1970, the AFL-CIO circulated a paper around Washington that read like a 2016 Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders speech. “The United States position on world trade deteriorated in the 1960’s, with an adverse impact on American workers, communities, and industries,” the union paper declared.

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“But Nixon and everyone else just paid lip service to it. Nothing really happened. * * * — The Nixon administration was not the first to pay that kind of lip service to the idea of training American workers to be more competitive. It started in the Kennedy years. When Kennedy proposed global trade liberalization in 1962, he tacked on a program called Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA. He justified it with the same argument to Congress that Peterson would make nine years later about not forcing a small group to pay the cost of a beneficial change in national policy. “When considerations of national policy make it desirable to avoid higher tariffs, those injured by that competition should not be required to bear the full brunt of the impact,” Kennedy urged.

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More subsidy would mean greater Federal control and ultimately higher taxes for such subsidies….The only logical conclusion I can draw from the present trade bill is that socialization of industry must be the inevitable result if we embark on this avenue.” Others opposed TAA because the subsidies would give special treatment for those affected by trade liberalization. It was a position that might logically have led to the kind of overall job-training initiatives that would be advocated fruitlessly by Peterson in 1971. Instead, those making the argument used it as a rationale to block all subsidies. “Particularly objectionable is the treatment accorded workers dis-employed by imports under the bill,” said Prescott Bush, a Republican senator from Connecticut (and father and grandfather of the future presidents Bush).

Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Greenspan put, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mercator projection, Mont Pelerin Society, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Philip Mirowski, power law, price mechanism, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, statistical model, Suez crisis 1956, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

In a piece written in a festschrift for Erhard the same year, Haberler spoke similarly about the outsiders, including “Latin American countries, which are much poorer than Eu­rope,” that ­will be injured by Eu­ro­pean trade discrimination “and had no reason to accept this injury calmly.”124 Eu­rope itself may profit, Haberler argued, “but the world economy as a w ­ hole loses.”125 “The question about an alternative to discriminatory integration policy is easy to answer. The alternative is: overall trade liberalization [as advocated by GATT].”126 Even against Haberler’s precise intentions, his report launched a new era at the GATT. As a follow-up to the Haberler Report, the contracting parties at their thirteenth session in November 1958 deci­ded to establish three committees to examine vari­ous types of action to promote an expansion of international trade.127 The working group called “Committee III” initiated a “permanent shift” in the GATT relationship to developing countries in ­favor of their demands for market access.128 For the next two de­cades, the developing countries w ­ ere able to use GATT successfully to lobby for exemptions from “disciplines” of nondiscrimination and for permission to deviate from the strictures of the treaty.129 One scholar notes that Haberler openly opposed the interpretation of the report’s finding as proof for the theory of the declining terms of trade, arguing instead that “more trade” would solve the prob­lem in the long run.130 In 1964 he declared confidently that “the less developed countries have greatly benefited from the expansion of world trade and that the prosperity in ‘the industrial centers’ has spread to ‘the less developed periphery.’ ” Failure to grow more quickly was the fault of their own protectionism.131 In a notable irony, the Geneva School attempt to lock in liberal trade policy through the Haberler Report ended up 204 GLOBALISTS creating the conditions for the precise opposite: ammunition for a Global South argument against a one-­size-­fits-­all application of trade rules.

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He used other cybernetic terms elsewhere, including “closed cir­cuit feedback loops,” “circular causality,” “spill-­over,” and “spill-­back mechanisms.” Petersmann, “Die Dritte Welt und das Wirtschaftsvölkerrecht,” 513. 173. Petersmann, “Völkerrecht und Entwicklung,” 161. 174. Richard Blackhurst, Nicolas Marian, and Jan Tumlir, Trade Liberalization, Protectionism, and Interdependence (Geneva: GATT, 1977), 5. 175. Tumlir, “National Sovereignty, Power and Interest,” 21. 176. Jan Tumlir, “How the West Can Pay the New Arab Oil Bill,” Sunday Times (London), February 3, 1974. 177. Tumlir, “National Sovereignty, Power and Interest,” 2. 178.

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Jan Tumlir, “Notes on the Theory and Pres­ent State of International Economic Order,” paper presented at the International Conference on the ­Free Trade Movement in Latin Amer­i­ca, June 21–24 [1981], Haus Rissen, Hamburg, Hayek Papers, Duke, box 53, folder 28. 181. Ibid. 182. Tumlir, “National Sovereignty, Power and Interest,” 24. 183. Richard Blackhurst, Nicolas Marian, and Jan Tumlir, Adjustment, Trade and Growth in Developed and Developing Countries (Geneva: GATT, 1978), 1. 184. Blackhurst, Marian, and Tumlir, Trade Liberalization, Protectionism, and Interdependence, 49. 185. Tumlir, “International Economic Order and Demo­cratic Constitutionalism,” 72. 186. Ibid., 80. 187. Tumlir, “Need for an Open Multilateral Trading System,” 403. 188. Ibid.; emphasis in the original. The field of public choice and so-­called constitutional economics (a term coined by Richard MacKenzie in 1982) is the s­ilent partner in much of the discussion in this chapter, but it is not included for reasons of space.

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? by David G. Blanchflower

90 percent rule, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Clapham omnibus, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, driverless car, estate planning, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nate Silver, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, p-value, Panamax, pension reform, Phillips curve, plutocrats, post-materialism, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, quantitative easing, rent control, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, urban planning, working poor, working-age population, yield curve

A recent study explored the relationship between mortality and a plausibly exogenous change in U.S. trade policy in October 2000: granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China that differentially exposed U.S. counties to increased international competition via their industry structure.45 The authors of the study found that counties more exposed to trade liberalization exhibit higher rates of suicide among whites and especially white men. Case and Deaton argue that the rise in mortality of prime-age, less-educated whites in the United States is explained by cumulative disadvantage, which they suggest is “rooted in the steady deterioration in job opportunities for people with low education.

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MacCulloch. 2004. “Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?” Journal of Public Economics 88 (9–10): 2009–42. Algan, Y., and P. Cahuc. 2013. “Trust, Well-Being and Growth: New Evidence and Policy Implications.” IZA Discussion Paper No. 7464, Bonn. Amiti, M., and J. Konings. 2007. “Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia.” American Economic Review 97 (5): 1611–38. Anderson, S. A., C. S. Russell, and W. R. Schumm. 1983. “Perceived Marital Quality and Family LifeCycle Categories: A Further Analysis.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 45: 127–39.

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“Suicide Rates by Major Occupational Group—17 States, 2012 and 2015.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 67 (45): 1253–60. Phillips, A. W. 1958. “The Relation between Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861–1957.” Economica 25 (100): 283–99. Pierce, J. R., and P. K. Schott. 2016. “Trade Liberalization and Mortality: Evidence from U.S. Counties.” Paper #2016- 094. Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC. Pike, A., D. MacKinnon, M. Coombes, T. Champion, D. Bradley, A. Cumbers, L. Robson, and C.

The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order by Bruno Macaes

active measures, Berlin Wall, Brexit referendum, British Empire, computer vision, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, digital map, Donald Trump, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global value chain, illegal immigration, intermodal, iterative process, land reform, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, megacity, middle-income trap, open borders, Parag Khanna, savings glut, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, speech recognition, Suez canal 1869, The Brussels Effect, trade liberalization, trade route, Transnistria, young professional, zero-sum game, éminence grise

In this new age it pays to think across national borders. When intermediate inputs tend to cross borders many times, even small tariffs and border bottlenecks have a cumulative effect and protective measures against imports increase the costs of production and reduce your export competitiveness. These are all good arguments for trade liberalization, but what happens to your ability to organize production along the most efficient lines? If goods are produced entirely within one country, you have full control over the whole process. Once they are produced in the world, the combined result of an intricate division of labour within each value chain, then things get rather tricky.

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What happens when globalization starts to be perceived as not necessarily advantageous and congenial to Europeans? Unsurprisingly, the commitment to an open global order starts to wobble. As we have witnessed over the last two years, it has become difficult if not impossible to defend further trade liberalization in most European countries, and a number of initiatives have been put forward to limit the impact of Chinese imports and investment acquisitions. Comfort with the world outside is of course much increased if one has the ability to shape or at least influence that world. By historical standards, the European ability to project its power outwards has suffered a precipitous decline, throwing Europeans back to a time when the world seemed a strange and chaotic place, with the not-insignificant difference that there is nothing left of the old ‘civilizing mission’, the impulse to organize far-away places along familiar lines.

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century by Ryan Avent

3D printing, Airbnb, American energy revolution, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, Bakken shale, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BRICs, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, creative destruction, currency risk, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, falling living standards, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Ford paid five dollars a day, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, heat death of the universe, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, knowledge economy, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, mass immigration, means of production, new economy, performance metric, pets.com, post-work, price mechanism, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reshoring, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, software is eating the world, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, very high income, warehouse robotics, working-age population

Yet a series of momentous economic changes beginning in the 1970s and carrying through the 1980s boosted the economic importance of social capital. Economic liberalization and deregulation contributed to this process. Britain and America reduced tax rates and liberalized, and privatized, government-dominated sectors in the 1980s; other European economies followed in earnest in the 1990s. The long process of trade liberalization that had begun in the post-war decades continued, and was joined by a push to open up cross-border capital flows. Integration of the world economy accelerated, raising the economic return to social organizations capable of managing the more complex economic environment. At the same time, the digital revolution first registered in a significant way in the public consciousness.

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A California technology company could source component supplies from half a dozen Asian economies, have them all meet together in a Chinese port city for assembly, and then ship the finished package to consumers. This allowed production chains that previously needed to be located within a single firm or country to fragment across an economic archipelago.11 Information technology was not solely responsible for these developments: better shipping technologies and trade liberalization helped. Yet without the ability to coordinate production efficiently and in real time, the system could never have developed. Its effects were profound. Emerging economies no longer needed to slowly and painfully accumulate knowledge and capabilities as they worked their way from production of plastic toys to industrial robots.

Are Chief Executives Overpaid? by Deborah Hargreaves

banking crisis, benefit corporation, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bonus culture, business climate, corporate governance, Donald Trump, G4S, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, late capitalism, loadsamoney, long term incentive plan, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, performance metric, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Snapchat, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, wealth creators

The absence of trickle down, the growing feeling that business leaders are in it for themselves and the damage to the economy from short-term management incentives, would all indicate that change is required in the way we pay our top bosses. The deep influence of the business sector has imposed globalization and trade liberalization on a populace that finds it hard to discern the benefits. At the same time, they see the corporate elite hand in glove with governments around the world to ensure there is little challenge to the current set-up. This reinforces the impression among the public that the system is rigged and the powerful are not just greedy but corrupt as well.

The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor, and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car by Tim Harford

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, business cycle, collective bargaining, congestion charging, Corn Laws, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, household responsibility system, information asymmetry, invention of movable type, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, market design, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, new economy, Pearl River Delta, price discrimination, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, second-price sealed-bid, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, special economic zone, spectrum auction, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Vickrey auction

The policy encourages intensive farming with the obvious results of poor food quality and high use of pesti-cides and fertilizers, and all the while dumps food on the developing world and depresses the prices received by farmers in poor countries. Into the bargain it is helping to derail the current round of world trade liberalization. As Martin Wolf commented in the Financial Times: “This is a multifunctional policy indeed: regressive, wasteful, damaging to food quality and the environment and an obstacle to trade liberalization everywhere.” Other rich nations, especially Japan and Korea, privilege their farmers the same way as the European Union: a third of the typical OECD farm’s revenue comes from government support, and as the second figure on page 217 shows, the more agriculture is subsidized, the more fertilizers it consumes.

The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by Mancur Olson

barriers to entry, British Empire, business cycle, California gold rush, collective bargaining, correlation coefficient, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, full employment, income per capita, Kenneth Arrow, market clearing, Norman Macrae, Pareto efficiency, Phillips curve, price discrimination, profit maximization, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Sam Peltzman, search costs, selection bias, Simon Kuznets, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, urban decay, working poor

As table 5.2 reveals, Sweden and Switzerland, and especially the latter, have had unusually low levels of protection. Note also that the Japanese economy grew more rapidly in the 1960s than in the 1950s, despite the fact that Japan could gain more from catching up by borrowing foreign technology in the earlier decade than the later. As Alfred Ho emphasizes in Japan's Trade Liberalization in the 1960's, is between 1960 and 1965 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) "liberalization rate" measure for Japan improved from 41 percent to 93 percent. Finally, note that Germany, which considerably liberalized its economic policies before entering the Common Market, grew more rapidly in the 1950s than in the 1960s, in contrast to EEC partners like Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.

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Indeed, since we now have a wider array of cases where freer trade is associated with more rapid growth and several aspects of the patterns of growth suggest that the freer trade is connected with the growth, the paradox is heightened. If freer trade leads to more rapid growth, why does it not show up in the measures of the gains from the transactions that the trade liberalization allows to take place? The reason is that there is a further advantage of freer trade that escapes the usual comparative-static measurements. It escapes these measurements because the gains are not direct gains of those who take part in the international transactions that the liberalization permitted, but other gains from increases in efficiency in the importing countryincreases that are distinct from and additional to any that arise because of comparative advantage.

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climatic Research Unit, commodity super cycle, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic transition, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, energy security, failed state, financial independence, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Neolithic agricultural revolution, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, phenotype, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, rewilding, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, systematic bias, Tesla Model S, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, women in the workforce, yield curve

In addition, Doces cites a 2006 study analyzing the effects on globalization on women in 180 countries that shows “increasing international exchange and communication create new opportunities for income-generating work and expose countries to norms that, in recent decades, have promoted equality for women.”46 As a result, trade-induced demand for human capital expands to include women, further cutting fertility rates in poor countries. This conclusion is further bolstered by a 2005 study by University of Helsinki economists Ulla Lehmijoki and Tapio Palokangas; according to this study, in the short run trade liberalization boosts birth rates, but in the long run it cuts fertility. Again, this is true largely because trade liberalization encourages the development of women’s human capital (education), which makes childbearing relatively more costly. The Invisible Hand of Population Control In 2002, Seth Norton, an economics professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, published a remarkably interesting study, “Population Growth, Economic Freedom, and the Rule of Law,” on the inverse relationship between prosperity and fertility.

The Linguist: A Personal Guide to Language Learning by Steve Kaufmann

borderless world, British Empire, discovery of DNA, financial independence, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, language acquisition, South China Sea, trade liberalization, urban sprawl

The message of this book was that a Japanese newspaper publisher importing foreign newsprint paper was selling out freedom of speech to a foreign conspiracy. Times have changed now, and Japanese paper companies themselves have built paper mills in many countries of the world, including Canada. In the 1980s, under trade liberalization pressure from the United States, the Japanese Telephone Company (NTT) allowed foreign paper producers to bid for the telephone directory paper business. Our company was the first foreign supplier to pass the quality testing. That was the easy part. It was much more difficult to deal with the cozy relationships between Japanese suppliers and customers, often described by the term “Japan Incorporated.”

Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, colonial rule, corporate personhood, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deskilling, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, invisible hand, liberation theology, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuremberg principles, one-state solution, open borders, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus

One prominent economic historian, Paul Bairoch, argues that protectionism, paradoxically, has commonly increased trade. The reason, he suggests, is that protectionism tends to stimulate growth, and growth leads to trade; while imposed liberalization, since the eighteenth century, has fairly consistently had harmful economic effects. The historical record provides substantial evidence that “historically, trade liberalization has been the outcome rather than the cause of economic development” (Ha-Joon Chang), apart from the “development” of narrow sectors of great wealth and privilege who benefit from resource extraction.1 From an extensive review, Bairoch concludes that “It is difficult to find another case where the facts so contradict a dominant theory [as the theory] concerning the negative impact of protectionism.”

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See “free trade” Taylor, Lance, 107 technology, 87–89, 93 terrorism, 26–29, 249 war on, 42, 60–61, 267–68 See also specific topics Texas, annexation of, 17 Thailand, 90 Thucydides, 37 Tiedeman, Christopher, 30 Timor Gap Treaty, 184–85 Torricelli, Robert, 51–52 Torture Convention, UN, 262 torture memos, 259–68 “trade,” concept of, 90 trade liberalization, 76 and third world, 80 See also “free trade” Trujillo, Rafael, 47 Turkey, 44 Turner, Mark, 100 “unholy trinity,” 72 Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), 59–60, 104, 115 United Nations (UN), 128–29, 163 Charter, 136, 150, 195, 200, 250 Committee on Disarmament, 167 Human Development Index, 175 Israel-Arab conflict and, 195, 252–53 R2P and, 20, 185, 278 Security Council, 129, 146, 148, 149, 169, 179, 195, 249, 278 Resolution 242 (UN 242), 161, 179 Resolution 687, 136, 170 Resolution 1887, 195, 200 Torture Convention, 262 World Food Program, 12 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 151 United States characterizations of, 21 early history, 17–20 Fourth Fleet, 57 Liberal Illiberalism, 40–42 mega-embassies, 63, 203 “national identity,” 40 “national purpose,” 39–40 political ideals, 40–41, 46–47, 97, 122, 131–32 (See also “democracy promotion”; idealism) popular attitudes toward social democratic (welfare state) programs, 208–9 “transcendent purpose,” 39 See also specific topics Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), 38, 99 Uttar Pradesh, 213 Valenzuela, Arturo, 68 van Alstyne, R.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

Thus, like those of undocumented and irregular migrants and refugees, the experiences of legally authorized migrant workers are foundationally organized through immobility. Migrant worker programs shape and are shaped by racial capitalism, where land and labor are appropriated but people are disenfranchised. Coming from Mexico and Ghana, for example, indebted farmers and peasants, displaced from their own lands and livelihoods by capitalist trade liberalization, become bonded laborers for agribusinesses in the US and Italy. Because these distinctly racialized migrant workers are categorized as “foreigners,” a material and ideological differentiation is produced between them and citizens. This distinction further conjoins race to the nation-state, buttresses racialized and nationalized working-class identities, and exacerbates the legally constructed and state-sanctioned vulnerability of migrant workers.

…

These makeshift tent cities have no running water, electricity, healthcare, or sanitation. When an encampment gets too large, officials raze it to the ground. One of the cruelest ironies of capitalist globalization is the proletarianization of displaced peasants into migrant farmworkers. In Ghana, for example, trade liberalization policies have caused an influx of cheap imported Italian tomato puree and the decline of local tomato production.3 Consequently, Ghana has become one of the world’s largest importers of tomato paste, 90 percent of which comes from the EU, mainly from Italy, which is one of the world’s largest tomato producers.4 Farmers from Ghana now have to pick and process tomatoes for the same Italian agribusinesses that decimated their livelihoods.

Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century by Mark Leonard

Berlin Wall, Celtic Tiger, continuous integration, cuban missile crisis, different worldview, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, global reserve currency, Global Witness, invisible hand, knowledge economy, mass immigration, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, one-China policy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pension reform, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, shareholder value, South China Sea, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Washington Consensus

Many people had argued that Europe should develop a presidential or parliamentary system modelled on the nation-state. But these critics were missing the point of the European Union. The reason that people do not turn out in their droves to vote for the European Parliament is not because it has no power. It is because none of the issues in which the EU specializes – trade liberalization, monetary policy, the removal of non-tariff barriers, technical regulation in the environmental and other areas, foreign aid, and general foreign policy co-ordination – appears anywhere on the list of issues that voters care about.15 In fact, none of the policies in the five most important issues for voters in Europe – health care provision, education, law and order, pension and social security policy, and taxation – are set by the European Union.

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith

Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, colonial rule, data science, deglobalization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, electricity market, energy security, flex fuel, G4S, global supply chain, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, guest worker program, Hans Island, hydrogen economy, ice-free Arctic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, land tenure, Martin Wolf, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Y2K

A score of 86, for example, means a country ranked higher than 86% of all of the countries in the world that are measured by that particular index. Also shown is a single composite score for each country, averaged across the five numeric indices. A remarkable story leaps from these numbers. With the exception of Russia, the NORC countries are the most stable, trade-liberal, rapidly globalizing players on the planet. Who knew that Denmark and Canada are even more open to free trade than Japan, Germany, or the United States? Of particular relevance to energy production is that this openness also pervades the oil and gas industry, in contrast to the worldwide trend toward nationalization described in Chapter 3.433 Civil and political freedoms run remarkably high except in Russia.

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To allow comparison between these indices, numeric index data were converted to percentile country rank. Taking an average of these percentile rankings provides the composite score in the right-most column of the table. 432 Each index has its own agenda, which is why I prefer to look at all of them. Jeffrey Sachs, for example, questions the contention in Index of Economic Freedom that trade liberalization necessarily leads to GDP growth, citing examples, like China, which have very strong economic growth despite low scores on the index. J. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), 416 pp. 433 Most oil and gas outfits operating in the northern high latitudes are private multinational companies, except in the Russian Federation, where the industry is increasingly returning to state control. 434 The 2010 Economist Intelligence Unit assessed 140 countries in their global livability index.

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War by Benn Steil

Albert Einstein, Alistair Cooke, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, full employment, imperial preference, invisible hand, Kenneth Rogoff, kremlinology, land reform, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, open economy, Potemkin village, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, structural adjustment programs, the market place, trade liberalization, Transnistria, Winter of Discontent, Works Progress Administration, éminence grise

Members would agree to cut quantitative import restrictions in half by year’s end, and to collaborate on the creation of a payments union, underwritten with Marshall funds, to eliminate currency barriers to trade. In January 1950, Hoffman would press further, making up to a quarter of ECA aid dependent on progress in trade liberalization and integration. Cripps decried it as “dollar dictatorship.” Even Acheson, ever pragmatic and anxious to sustain solidarity in the face of Soviet threats, opposed such conditionality. But van der Beugel defended Hoffman, noting that “it was again American and not European initiative which pushed Western Europe further on the road to greater cooperation and integration.”15 Seeing the need for a “Marshall Plan” of his own to showcase Soviet economic leadership in eastern Europe, Stalin decreed one.

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In Britain, the Attlee Labour government directed 97 percent of counterpart funds to retiring government debt, thereby depriving the ECA of levers it might, even in principle, have applied to change economic priorities in London. The only areas in which British policy was clearly steered from Washington were trade liberalization (which had been a condition going back to wartime Lend-Lease aid) and European Payments Union membership, both of which London initially resisted.35 The aid itself, however, amounting to 1.9 percent of GDP from 1948 to 1951, served to prop up a socialist program of nationalization and industrial control with which the Truman administration, not to mention Republican legislators, strongly disagreed.

…

Indeed, in August 1949 Britain—virtually dollarless and at odds with Washington over plans for protectionist retreat into the sterling area—reluctantly devalued sterling by 30 percent after its Treasury warned of “another instalment of dollar crisis (even with ERP).”102 Germany and other nations quickly followed (twenty-three within a week), with the intended effect. Dollar deficits dissipated, and recovery picked up steam. British reserves tripled within two years.103 In the context of the early postwar period, however, a time in which most currencies were inconvertible and trade barriers high, global multilateral monetary and trade liberalization, of the sort envisioned at Bretton Woods, was utopian. Within Marshall aid countries, establishing a stable environment in which trust and cooperation could take hold among government, business, and workers was vital to the re-creation of a market economy. Across Marshall countries, U.S. security guarantees and financial support were indispensable to allowing those economies to integrate without engendering unmanageable domestic and foreign conflict.

Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist by Alex Zevin

"there is no alternative" (TINA), activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, Columbine, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, desegregation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, imperial preference, income inequality, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Khartoum Gordon, land reform, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, post-war consensus, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, Socratic dialogue, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

The remarkable fact, however, is that on the eve of the greatest electoral triumph for Liberalism, when it won 400 out of 670 Commons seats, the Economist failed to endorse it. Conservatives, under a Chamberlainite ‘delusion’ the Empire could be bound with reciprocal tariffs, were no longer trustworthy on free trade; sound on trade, Liberals seemed to lack the nerve to defend the Empire, most damningly in Ireland.85 So far as the paper was concerned, the election of 1906 was a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. Asquith, Ireland and the New Radicalism One of the editors responsible for leading the Economist to this impasse had, paradoxically, just assumed high office in the new Liberal government.

…

Liberals made gains almost everywhere – even in formerly hostile parts of Lancashire and London – adding 224 more seats since the khaki election of 1900. They now enjoyed an outright majority of 130, and with their Irish Nationalist and Labour allies, this rose to 356 – the widest margin since 1832.5 Yet the 1906 landslide had its origins in more than a negative defence of free trade. Liberals took active steps to win their historic victory, as evidenced by the widespread expectation that it was about to usher in a new era of social reform. Even as the franchise in Britain remained deeply undemocratic up to 1918 – with four and a half million lower class men unable to vote, 500,000 or so plural votes to property owners in the boroughs and counties, and women excluded – after 1885–86, about half the electorate was working-class.6 By the turn of the century, the growing trade union movement was attempting to organize the working class as an independent political force – a development Liberals vigilantly watched and tried to head off.

…

When Moscow defaulted in 1998, triggering the collapse of Long Term Capital Management – the heavily exposed hedge fund that lost $4.6 billion in four months – the paper defended the computer wizards whose models had failed to foresee this: ‘it is pleasant to mock the Nobel Laureates who helped found LTCM, but much of this mockery clouds the truth’, for ‘the question arises whether recent events are ever likely to be repeated.’44 But it also went on the attack against any who used such examples of ‘market failure’ to criticize, question or hold up globalization, with deputy editor Clive Crook leading the charge.45 Crook was thirty-eight in 1993, but looked ‘more like a teenager in the grey flannel slacks, white oxford-cloth shirt, and blue pullover sweater that are his only known costume’.46 ‘Fearsomely brilliant’, ‘arguing for Free Trade in this gruff Lancashire accent’, he was ‘the Manchester School come to life’; others called him the ‘intellectual Godfather’, with Emmott by turns ‘enthralled’ and ‘intimidated’, as editors asked (on points of doctrine), ‘Is Clive ok with this?’ Penning the feistiest articles in favour of trade liberalization, Crook sensed that 1999 was the moment to ‘come out fighting’ at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Holding high the banner of the WTO, the Economist exhorted the national governments gathered there to make a better sales pitch to citizens whose ‘support for free trade is weak at best’.

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, borderless world, business cycle, central bank independence, Corn Laws, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, inflation targeting, joint-stock company, Kula ring, land reform, land tenure, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, price mechanism, profit motive, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Free international trade allows a country to take advantage of its comparative advantage, increasing incomes on average, though it may cost some individuals their jobs. But in developing countries with high levels of unemployment, the job destruction that results from trade liberalization may be more evident than the job creation, and this is especially the case in IMF “reform” packages that combine trade liberalization with high interest rates, making job and enterprise creation virtually impossible. No one should have claimed that moving workers from low-productivity jobs to unemployment would either reduce poverty or increase national incomes.

Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg

Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, carbon tax, citizen journalism, classic study, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, green new deal, humanitarian revolution, illegal immigration, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, negative emissions, Network effects, open borders, open economy, Pax Mongolica, place-making, profit motive, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, spice trade, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, ultimatum game, universal basic income, World Values Survey, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

Countries like the US – with low savings, large budget deficits and much foreign investment – tend to have trade deficits, no matter which trade policies others adhere to. The economic gains from free trade are mind-blowingly large. A study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggests that the US economy is annually around $1000 billion bigger than it would have been without post-war trade liberalization – that is $10,000 per US household. The study assumes that the cost to displaced workers from lost wages and lower wages once re-employed is $50 billion annually. This means that the benefit– cost ratio is 20:1 – that is, the gains from free trade are twenty times greater than losses.63 We constantly talk about the death of the American middle class, and blame it on trade, but the real story is brighter.

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The only potential exception is that educational attainment predicts pro-trade views, which has often been interpreted as an expression of economic self-interest.22 They did find something else, though, when they asked how positively whites, blacks and Hispanics feel about their own group relative to the other two, and then asked them about trade. The stronger ethnocentrism they expressed, the less they liked free trade. On the surface this does not make any sense. ‘Why should how blacks feel about whites and Hispanics (or vice versa) have anything to do with trade liberalization?’ Yet in another way, it makes perfect sense. The more you think in terms of us vs them, the less likely you are to think groups can engage in mutually beneficial behaviour. Mansfield and Mutz believe this finding puts the result of education in a new light because, after accounting for the effects of one’s worldview, education does not have a direct effect on trade views.

Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders by Jason L. Riley

affirmative action, business cycle, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, desegregation, Garrett Hardin, guest worker program, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, mass immigration, open borders, open immigration, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

Ultimately, the think tank was hoisted by its own analytic petard. But first, some background. Along with other conservative outfits like the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Institute for Policy Innovation, Heritage helped pioneer the use of dynamic analysis. Whether the issue was trade liberalization or tax policy, free-market conservatives regularly mocked economic studies that took into account only static impacts. “[No] matter how many times a ‘static’ analysis is disproved,” Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner once wrote, “Congress keeps doing business in the same wrongheaded way.”

The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Metropolitan Elite by Michael Lind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, anti-communist, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, cotton gin, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, export processing zone, fake news, future of work, gentrification, global supply chain, guest worker program, Haight Ashbury, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal world order, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Michael Milken, moral panic, Nate Silver, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, trade liberalization, union organizing, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Wolfgang Streeck, working poor

Their spontaneous protests escalated into months of violence in Paris and other French cities, forcing Macron’s government to abandon the policy.9 Subsequently in 2019 the conservative party in Australia, based in low-density working-class areas, came from behind and defeated a progressive party that pushed environmental regulations that threatened jobs and low living costs in the periphery.10 * * * — LIKE DEBATES ABOUT the environment, debates about trade are battlefields in the class war. The overclass population living in hubs continues to tout the benefits of trade liberalization among high-wage and low-wage countries, including slightly lower prices for consumers for imports from low-wage nations, but much of the Western working class is no longer listening. As manufacturing jobs disappear overseas, disproportionately affecting the livelihoods of the working class in the heartland, more and more disaffected Americans look to leaders who promise to change the trade balance, economic orthodoxy be damned.

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Frank Trentmann

Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bread and circuses, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, classic study, clean water, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, company town, critique of consumerism, cross-subsidies, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, equity premium, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial exclusion, fixed income, food miles, Ford Model T, full employment, gentrification, germ theory of disease, global village, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, income inequality, index card, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Les Trente Glorieuses, libertarian paternalism, Livingstone, I presume, longitudinal study, mass immigration, McMansion, mega-rich, Michael Shellenberger, moral panic, mortgage debt, Murano, Venice glass, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Paradox of Choice, Pier Paolo Pasolini, planned obsolescence, pneumatic tube, post-industrial society, Post-Keynesian economics, post-materialism, postnationalism / post nation state, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, rent control, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, scientific management, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, seminal paper, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, stakhanovite, Ted Nordhaus, the built environment, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional, zero-sum game

For his official photograph, Mr de Croos appeared in morning suit, complete with top hat.71 THE DISCOVERY OF THE CONSUMER In Europe, the era of high imperialism (1870s–’90s) took consumption to new heights. In part, this was the result of the fast-advancing global integration of markets, made possible by steamships, imperial expansion and trade liberalization. The price of wheat, sugar, beef, cooking oil and much else plummeted. Cooling technology and canning brought Argentinian steak and Canadian salmon to dining tables in Bordeaux and Bristol. The cost of clothing fell, too. At the same time, European and American labour became more productive, thanks to factory production and new technologies, boosting exports and raising wages.

…

Just as there are terms of trade, we thus need to think about the terms of consumption, terms that change between groups, products and regions. We have already observed how empire altered status. It also redefined the value of place. Ironically, Hobson launched his attack on empire during the heyday of free trade, when the empire had come to matter less to Britons’ welfare than ever before. Trade liberalization – sometimes free, sometimes forced – and steamboats opened up the world for late-Victorian consumers. Victorians enjoyed beef from Argentina, sherry from Portugal and sugar from Brazil. The round of second industrial revolutions in France, Germany and the United States created new markets for finished goods which, again, lay outside the empire.

…

In the longer perspective, however, the break-up of the Spanish empire after the Napoleonic wars turned out to be a step backwards, as Venezuela and other newly independent states raised their own barriers and export taxes to finance themselves. The conclusion is clear: in the long run, mercantilism was not fit for mass consumption. That was the historic achievement of free trade from the 1840s. The phenomenal spread of tropical goods in the second half of the nineteenth century was driven by two forces: trade liberalization and a massive increase in cash-crop production. Unlike sugar, cocoa resisted industrial-style cultivation. It thrived in shade and needed surrounding plants to protect it from wind and disease. Economies of scale were few. Slavery was not absent – the Portuguese used it on São Tomé and Príncipe, their cocoa islands off West Africa, while the Germans tried ‘scientific’ planting and coerced labour in Cameroon, without much success.

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo

affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, belling the cat, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, diversification, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Live Aid, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, moral hazard, Multics, Ponzi scheme, rent-seeking, risk free rate, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, sovereign wealth fund, The Chicago School, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Yom Kippur War

In Africa, as with other parts of the developing world, this economic overhaul necessitated two new aid-based programmes: first, stabilization, and then structural adjustment. Stabilization meant reducing a country’s imbalances to reasonable levels – for example, the government’s fiscal position and the country’s import–export ratio. Meanwhile structural adjustment was aimed at encouraging greater trade liberalization and reducing price and structural rigidities by such means as removing subsidies. Both the World Bank and the IMF launched aggressive aid programmes to institute these two initiatives; the IMF’s Structural Adjustment and Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facilities are examples of these. Poor governments received cash in the form of budgetary support, and in return agreed to embrace the free-market solutions to development.

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order by Benn Steil

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, banks create money, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, deindustrialization, European colonialism, facts on the ground, fiat currency, financial independence, floating exchange rates, full employment, global reserve currency, imperial preference, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, lateral thinking, low interest rates, margin call, means of production, Michael Milken, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, open economy, Paul Samuelson, Potemkin village, price mechanism, price stability, psychological pricing, public intellectual, reserve currency, road to serfdom, seigniorage, South China Sea, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, the market place, trade liberalization, Works Progress Administration

Yet in 1947 reform of the imperial mind-set lagged well behind the frantic pace of global reordering. Over the next three months, Clayton worked doggedly on three fronts of what he saw as the same battle: extracting a compelling Marshall Plan assistance request from the Paris delegates, achieving a breakthrough on global trade liberalization, and encouraging the formation of a “European federation” to coordinate Europe’s economic efforts and implement a customs union. On the Marshall Plan front, the eponymous author had rebuffed Clayton’s repeated pleadings throughout the summer for interim assistance to the increasingly desperate and frustrated Europeans.

…

In September Marshall relented; on the tenth he publicly pressed Congress for quick appropriations to mitigate “hunger and cold this winter.” This had a profound effect on the Paris discussions, and on the twenty-second the Europeans finally submitted an “initial” report and assistance request that satisfied American expectations. Clayton immediately left Paris for London to press his case on trade liberalization, which he saw as an essential complement to American aid. This proved a tougher nut to crack. Throughout the summer, Clayton had struggled simultaneously with London over the dismantling of imperial preference and with protectionists in his own capital determined to erect new wool import tariffs.

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, declining real wages, deskilling, electricity market, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Flash crash, framing effect, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jobless men, John Bogle, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, London Interbank Offered Rate, lone genius, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, obamacare, offshore financial centre, paper trading, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payday loans, Phillips curve, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, very high income, We are the 99%, wealth creators, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

There is another reason why globalization may lower overall output; it typically increases the risks that countries face.27 Opening up a country can expose it to all kinds of risks, from the volatility of capital markets to that of commodity markets. Greater volatility will induce firms to move to less risky activities, and these safer activities often have a lower return. In some cases, the risk-avoidance effect can be so large that everyone is made worse-off.28 But even if trade liberalization leads to a higher overall output for a given economy, large groups in the population can still be worse off. Consider for a moment what a fully integrated global economy (with both knowledge and capital moving freely around the world) would entail: all workers (of a given skill) would get the same wage everywhere in the world.

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But the agreements go to hundreds of pages, because they are in fact managed-trade agreements, and managed for the benefit of special interests. They are agreements in which hosts of industries insist on one form of favorable treatment or another. Companies’ focus is naturally on rules that increase their profits. When trade liberalization helps their profits, then they’re in favor of it; but when it works the other way, they oppose it. And for the most part, the U.S. trade representative and trade ministers from other advanced industrial countries represent the interests of the country’s companies. Opening up trade is, however, only one part of the focus of trade negotiations.

Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone by Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw, Jill Tracie Nichols

3D printing, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, anti-globalists, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bretton Woods, business process, cashless society, charter city, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, data science, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, fault tolerance, fulfillment center, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, growth hacking, hype cycle, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, late capitalism, Mars Rover, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, Neal Stephenson, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, place-making, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business, TED Talk, telepresence, telerobotics, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Soul of a New Machine, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, two-sided market, universal basic income, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, young professional, zero-sum game

He pointed out that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major trade agreement that was pending approval in Washington at the time, is about helping large and small companies find growth in Japan, Australia, Canada, Chile, and other Pacific Rim nations that want to increase trade with America. The world needs continued progress on trade liberalization. Kasich pointed out that 40 million U.S. jobs depend on trade. But our trade laws also need to be modernized. In this digital economy, the bits and bytes imported and exported are as critical to trade as the automobiles, agricultural products, and other goods we trade. We need to be able to transfer data across borders in the course of business and to do so without having to locate computing facilities in every territory, while protecting privacy, source code, and other forms of intellectual property.

Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More by Charles Kenny

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, germ theory of disease, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, inventory management, Kickstarter, Milgram experiment, off grid, open borders, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Robert Solow, seminal paper, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, very high income, Washington Consensus, X Prize

Even if the link between levels of trade and rapid economic growth appears fragile, trade in goods has been a central factor in reducing the cost of quality of life around the world. It has also freed countries from the Malthusian trap through food imports. This makes the failure of the recent round of World Trade Organization talks on further trade liberalization an undoubted loss. International trade negotiations have had some significant negative implications for the quality of life of the world’s poorest, nonetheless. They have begun to impinge dramatically on the free flow of knowledge and ideas around the world, by strengthening the intellectual property laws that restrict such flows.

The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality by Brink Lindsey

Airbnb, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Build a better mousetrap, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, experimental economics, experimental subject, facts on the ground, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, inventory management, invisible hand, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical malpractice, Menlo Park, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, patent troll, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart cities, software patent, subscription business, tail risk, tech bro, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, tragedy of the anticommons, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce

The minimum wage declined steadily, both in real terms and in comparison to the median wage, although there is now a flurry of initiatives to hike it dramatically. At the same time, the old anticompetitive policies that sustained unionism even as they subsidized industry have likewise receded. Price and entry controls were eliminated in the late 1970s and early ’80s while ongoing trade liberalization has steadily whittled away tariffs to almost nothing. The main rent-creating policies that have emerged and grown in recent decades have a much tighter focus on helping out those at the top. As we will describe in the case studies that follow, sometimes these policies directly benefit higher-income individuals at the expense of everyone else.

The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire by Wikileaks

affirmative action, anti-communist, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Boycotts of Israel, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Edward Snowden, energy security, energy transition, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, experimental subject, F. W. de Klerk, facts on the ground, failed state, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of journalism, high net worth, invisible hand, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, liberal world order, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Northern Rock, nuclear ambiguity, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, statistical model, Strategic Defense Initiative, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Already in 2005, when Correa was minister for the economy in a populist administration, the US embassy in Quito had noted that he was “a strong critic of the FTA negotiations.” Correa favored abandoning the tight fiscal policy of the former administration that had aligned closely with the US and using oil revenues to invest in public-sector wages and development. He was critical of “trade liberalization in general … of the IMF, and of any orthodox economic reform.”23 A further cable noted that “Correa made public statements on April 21 that foreign debt needed to be renegotiated, that Ecuador’s oil revenue needed to be spent on social programs, that Ecuador would be completely sovereign in its relations with the IMF, and that any free trade agreement would be submitted to a referendum (where it would most likely be voted down).”

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W. 479–80 Delare, Thomas 189–90 democracy promotion 28–9, 39–40, 46–7, 60, 162, 176, 312, 374, 493–4, 496, 518–22 Deng Xiaoping 444, 451 Deniau, Jean-François 341 Denmark 245 Derham, James 535–7, 542–3 Dermer, Ron 271, 274, 283 Der Spiegel (newspaper) 197 De Sutter, Paula 222–3 Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) 386 Diaz, Dave 86 Dictatorships, American relationship to 23–31 Digital Millennium Copyright Act 135 Digital Rights Management technology (DRM) 133–4, 135 Diskin, Yuval 273, 276–7, 285 documents: classification level 6–8, 149, 150–1; numbers published 1–2 dollar diplomacy 44, 126 dollar, the, importance of 121 Dominican Republic 56 Dostum, Ahmad Rashid 393–4 drone strikes 88–89 Duddy, Patrick 531 Duvalier, François “Papa Doc” 53, 62 Duvalier, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” 53, 58, 62–3, 63, 64 economic liberalization 47–9, 122, 137–40 economic power 112, 112–41, 352–3; capital flight 131, 138; dominance of Wall Street 139–41; exchange rates 120; exercise of 123–32; exposing 113–17; free trade imperialism 117–23, 132–6; importance of the dollar 121; and market-dependency 125–32; money flows 120, 137–8 Economic Support Funds (ESF) 162 Economist 83, 113 Ecuador 18, 497–503, 516; Article 98 agreements 173–6; CIA involvement 501–2; Constituent Assembly 500–1; Correa presidency 498–503; corruption 174–5; democracy promotion 176; ICC-related sanctions 173–7; International Visitor program 174; market-dependency 125–32; oil revenue 127, 128; pharmaceutical licenses 502–3; public spending 130; trade liberalization 127; US ambassador expelled, 2011 503 Edelman, Eric 253–4, 258–9, 261 Egypt 27, 45, 46, 299; coup, 1952 42, 44; coup against the Muslim Brotherhood 41, 48; democracy assistance 30; economic crisis 45; economic reform 47–9; fall of Mubarak 32, 36–40; nationalization of Suez Canal 43; patronage 38; poverty 37; strategic importance 237–8; US aid 30 Eisenhower Doctrine, 44 ElBaradei, Mohamed 248, 339–48, 459–60 Ellsberg, Daniel 18–19 el-Masri, Khaled 201–6 El Salvador 18, 29, 30, 57, 58, 485, 486–92, 537, 538 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah 48 embassies 3–4 empires 2–3 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 17, 31, 244–5, 250, 253–4, 258–9, 260–1, 262 Espionage Act, 1917 7 EU Council, and Article 98 agreements 163 European cables 181–211; and GMOs 187–95; Plan 2015 185–7; and trade relations 184–5, 187–95 European Commission 194 European Court of Justice 206 European Food Safety Authority 195 European Phased Adaptive Approach 331 European Union: collusion with CIA 14; court dealings 200–210; and GMOs 188, 189–90, 194, 194–5; Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia 220; resistance to American power 210; and the Ukraine crisis 210; and the war on terror 195–200 Europe, US missile defense 219, 223–30, 330–4 Eurozone, sovereign debt crisis 141 extraordinary rendition 75, 239–40, 261 Fackler, Martin 424–5 Facussé Barjum, Miguel 70, 71 Fallows, James 439 Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) 486–7, 490–2 FARC 125 Fatah 276–7, 278, 280–1, 293 Fayyad, Salam 271, 272 FBI 4 Federal Reserve 120, 127, 139 Fein, Ashden 9 Feith, Douglas 207–10 Fernández, Leopoldo 508–9 Fidan, Hakan 259 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission 139 financial regulation 136–41 Financial Services Agreement 137 Financial Times 218 Flores, Javier 508 Flourney, Michelle 409–11, 412 Foltz, William J. 27 Forbes magazine 114, 187 Ford, Charles 536, 537 Ford, Robert Stephen 166 Foreign Affairs 217–18 Foreign Military Financing assistance program 166 Foreign Policy 226 Foreign Terrorist Organization list 464 Forgeard, Noel 185 FRAGO 242 protocol 76, 104–5 Fraker, Ford 301–2 France 27, 42, 194–6, 251–2 Frattini, Franco 329 Freedom Agenda 39–40 free market, the 83, 116–17 free trade 12, 40, 73; imperialism 11–12, 117–23, 132–6 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) 73, 125, 127, 175 French, Philip 521 Friedman, Milton 69, 122 Friedman, Thomas 112 Fukushima nuclear crisis 425, 427 Fukuyama, Francis 444 Funes, Mauricio 490–2 G8, summit, 2011 47 Gaddafi, Muammar 31, 44, 178 Gaidar, Yegor 218 Galant, Yoav 285 Gangotena, Raul 173 Gantz, Benny 272–3, 295–6 Garlasco, Marc 86 Garzón, Baltazar 209–10 Gates, Robert 41, 206–7, 213, 328–9, 331 GATT negotiations, the Uruguay Round 121 Gaza Strip 39, 180, 266, 276–85, 293 General Agreement on Tariffs and Services 137, 140 genetically modified agricultural products (GMOs) 187–95, 210 Geneva conventions 108–9, 270, 385, 393 Georgia: Rose Revolution 212, 220; and South Ossetia 219–22 Germany: ANA Trust Fund contributions 196–7; and the el-Masri case 202–3, 204–6; and the invasion of Iraq 195–6; reunification 212 Ghani, Ashraf 394 Gilad, Amos 274–5, 276, 279, 295–6 Gitmo Files, the 75, 80, 94, 97–101 Giuliani, Rudy 311 Glazer, Charles 489–90 global financial crisis, 2008 113, 136–41, 447, 452, 453 globalization 46, 83, 118, 123, 133 Global Policy Forum 92 Godec, Robert 33–4, 35 Goldberg, Philip 509 Goldstone Report 179, 274–5, 281–3, 285 Goldstone, Richard 281–2 Gonzales, Alberto R. 108, 207–10 Good Neighbor doctrine 50, 53, 54–8 Google Maps 222–3 Gorbachev, Mikhail 212, 223–4, 231 Gordon, Philip 248–51 Gottemoeller, Rose E. 232, 233 Gramsci, Antonio 440 Grandin, Greg 96, 484 Great Britain 182–3, 188; loss of empire 27, 28, 42, 44, 433 Greenlee, David 505–6, 541 Greenwald, Glenn 159–60, 178 Grenada 57, 123 Guam 417 Guam International Agreement 409–10 Guantánamo Bay 75, 75–6, 97–101; military prison opened 99; prisoner numbers 99; prisoner releases 100; use of torture 96, 99; validation 101 Guardian (newspaper) 105, 115, 179, 250 Guatemala 55, 164, 484, 535–6, 542–3 Gülen, Fethullah 17, 254–5, 259–60 Gülen schools 254–8 Gulf War, 1991 45, 46 Guriev, Sergey 214 Gutiérrez, Lucio 174, 175, 497, 498 Hague, William 183 Haiti 18, 26, 30, 49, 50, 58, 486; American involvement 60–5, 510–14; CIA involvement 64; coup, 2004 512; Group of 184 64–5; human rights 64; Lavalas movement 63–4; military intervention 62–3; neoliberal reform 59, 64; occupation, 1915 52–3; Petrocaribe program in 533–4; repression 61–2; UN occupation 65; wages 61, 64 al-Hajj, Sami 75–6, 79 al-Hakim, Muhammad Baqir 84 Hamada, Yasukazu 407 Hamas 265, 266, 276–8, 279–80, 281, 282–3, 284–5, 293 al-Hasani, Muhanad 318 Hatoyama, Yukio 398, 425–6 Hebb, Donald 101 Heinonen, Olli 346–7 Heleno, Augusto 514 Helms, Richard 66 Hersh, Seymour 76 Hezbollah 284 Hill, James 541 Hinchey Report 66 Ho Chi Minh 27 Hodges, Heather 501, 502, 503 Holbrooke, Richard 337–8 Honduras 49, 52, 57, 536–7, 543–4; Article 98 agreements 162; constitution 72; coup, 2009 70–3, 537, 544; US aid 71, 72 Hudson, William 34, 35 Hu Jintao 453–4 human rights 29, 30, 58, 74–111, 475; Afghanistan 78; brutality 76–7; Chile 68–9; Haiti 64; and labeling 78–81; Syria 297–8, 314; and torture 94–111; Tunisia 33–4; US abuses 74–8 Human Rights Watch 282, 357, 364, 366–7 Hurlburt, Heather 216–17 Hussein, Abbas Ali 358 Inamine, Susumu 428–30 India 27 Indochina 27 Indonesia 27, 28, 446, 450, 451–2, 453, 458–9, 463 Institute of International Finance 47 intellectual property 133–4, 135, 467–8 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty 224 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 291–2, 323, 339–48, 459–60 International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes 130 International Court of Justice 263, 270 International Criminal Court (ICC) 13, 281; engagement with 177–80; establishment 160; jurisdiction 160–1; related sanctions 169–77; US avoidance of sanctions 162–9; US opposition to 161–2 International Development Bank (IDB) 504, 505–6 International Military Education Training (IMET) program 166 International Monetary Fund 45, 48, 50, 51, 59, 118, 121, 123, 129, 130, 504 International Republican Institute (IRI) 29, 40, 519–20 International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan” (ISAF) 385 International Studies Association (ISA), 10–11 10 International Studies Quarterly (ISQ) 10 International Trade Union Confederation 136 Iran 23, 28, 238, 321, 322–49, 458; armed confrontation threat 337–9; demonization of 248–51; and France 251–2; ICBM development 225, 226, 229, 230, 330–4; and Israel 251, 286–93, 323–9, 337–9, 348; nuclear program 15, 248–9, 281, 286–93, 294–5, 323, 335–6, 339–48, 348–9, 458–60; and Saudi Arabia 301–2; and Syria 299, 301–2; and Turkey 245–6, 246–53, 329–30; Venezuela’s relationship with 522 Iran-Contra scandal 492 Iraq 28, 42, 44, 350–67; economic warfare 352–3; embargo of 242; invasion of Kuwait 45; sectarianism 84, 85–6, 353–60, 361–3 Iraq Body Count 159 Iraqi Army (IA) 358–9 Iraq, invasion and occupation of 12, 23, 46, 83–6, 239, 288, 300, 369; Baghdad massacre 86–7; civilian casualties 88; collateral murder 350–2; counterinsurgency 84–6, 355; death squads 354–5; drone strikes 88–9; Europe and 195–6; Fallujah siege 88, 90–3, 254, 354, 357–60; human rights abuses 76; Iraqi insurgency 76–8, 362; Operation Phantom Fury 91–2; paramilitary strategy 84–5; reconnaissance by fire policy 353; resistance to 354–5; Sahwa movement 15, 360–3; sectarian divisions 15; Special Police Commandos (SPC) 84–5, 105, 110; use of torture 85, 103–5, 352, 363–7; US surge 360; US terrorism 82; war crimes prosecutions 159–60; war logs 15, 82, 103–4, 363–4 Ireland, Republic of 197–200 Ishak, Bassam 313 ISIS.

Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Alan Greenspan, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, constrained optimization, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kondratiev cycle, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, law of one price, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, long and variable lags, low interest rates, market clearing, market friction, Martin Wolf, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, placebo effect, post-war consensus, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, too big to fail, trade liberalization, value at risk, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-sum game

It is still unclear how much is to be attributed to the one and how much to the other. 39 The post-war trading and monetary regimes undoubtedly facilitated the diffusion of best-practice technology. Keynes’s handiwork can be found in the setting up of both, but the ideas that inspired them – trade liberalization, currency convertibility at fixed exchange rates – were of ancient provenance. What was intended to be restored was the nineteenth-century free trade/gold standard system, improved by experience of the interwar years. This reflected the American conviction that the troubles of that period had been brought about by trade and currency wars.

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This led the USA to acquiesce in the large sterling, franc and deutschmark devaluations against the dollar in 1949; it led to the huge outflow of American dollars on government account (Marshall Aid, military spending in Europe), later supplemented by large private outflows; and it led the United States to promote a European Payments Union, and allow the Union to discriminate against American goods, while also giving Japan privileged entry to the US market. The trend in the balance of payments in turn enabled exchange rates to be gradually stabilized and currencies to become convertible. This promoted trade liberalization, which 159 T h e R i s e , T r i u m p h a n d Fa l l of K e y n e s in turn fuelled economic growth. By the end of the 1960s America’s current account surplus had turned into a deficit. America’s role in the first phase of the golden age was not unfairly summed up by the banker Russell Leffingwell in 1960: Wisely we undertook to set the world to rights.

How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, bank run, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, borderless world, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, congestion pricing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, double entry bookkeeping, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, friendly fire, global village, Global Witness, Google Earth, high net worth, high-speed rail, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, private military company, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, sustainable-tourism, Ted Nordhaus, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, X Prize

All top figures in their fields, they were convened by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for a “Summit on the Global Agenda,” lending their minds to what the BBC’s Nik Gowing dubbed a “fundamental reboot” of global problem solving. But rather than formulating extravagant proposals, they huddled in “Global Agenda Councils” to perform mental brain dumps, sharing the latest thinking on alternative energy, food security, Mideast peace, financial risk, social entrepreneurship, biodiversity, trade liberalization, and dozens of other issues. No oversized groupthink here: Each expert group appointed ambassadors to fan out like intellectual hunter-gatherers, identifying linkage points: How can more efficient construction and transportation cut emissions while also creating jobs? How can skill-building centers be used to mitigate interfaith tensions?

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline

big-box store, biodiversity loss, business cycle, clean water, East Village, export processing zone, feminist movement, high-speed rail, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the sewing machine, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, megacity, messenger bag, Multi Fibre Arrangement, race to the bottom, rolling blackouts, Skype, special economic zone, trade liberalization, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, upwardly mobile, Veblen good

., a California brand that once sourced all of its clothes in Los Angeles–based factories, dropped 40 percent of their domestic production in one six-month period in the late 1990s.19 Levi’s was one of the last major garment manufacturers to give in and source from overseas, closing their last factory in San Antonio, Texas, in 2004. Like a massive engine grinding to a halt and then slowly turning in the opposite direction, import barriers on clothing to the United States began to be deftly wiped out in the midnineties. Job loss in the clothing production trades was heaviest during these years of aggressive trade liberalization and quota removal.20 The first big hit to the L.A. garment industry came in the form of the North American Free Trade Agreement, ratified in 1994, which removed duties on exports to Mexico. The effect of NAFTA was many American companies moving cut-and-sew operations just over the Mexican border to maquiladoras, where garments could be slapped together under much lower minimum wages.

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom by Martin Jacques

Admiral Zheng, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, classic study, credit crunch, Dava Sobel, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discovery of the americas, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income per capita, invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, land tenure, lateral thinking, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, Meghnad Desai, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, one-China policy, open economy, Pearl River Delta, pension reform, price stability, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, spinning jenny, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

As China’s financial power expands, its ability to make loans and give aid will increase dramatically, as we have seen in the case of Africa, where Chinese loans already exceed those made by the World Bank; in time, Chinese aid and loans could dwarf those made by the World Bank on a global basis as well.176 Meanwhile the WTO , with the demise of the Doha round - effectively torpedoed by China and India177 - together with the growing popularity of bilateral trade agreements, presently looks rather less important than it did a decade ago when trade liberalization was in full swing. The process of trade liberalization in East Asia since 2000, indeed, has largely bypassed the WTO, with China playing a key role through bilateral trade agreements. Another institution of the present international economic system, the G8, acts as a kind of metaphor for the way in which the international system might come to look increasingly less relevant.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work by Richard Baldwin

agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bread and circuses, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, commoditize, computer vision, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, future of journalism, future of work, George Gilder, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Hans Moravec, hiring and firing, hype cycle, impulse control, income inequality, industrial robot, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Metcalfe’s law, mirror neurons, new economy, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, post-work, profit motive, remote working, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, robotic process automation, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, standardized shipping container, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, universal basic income, warehouse automation

Once this change made long-distance trade feasible, the huge price differences across the world made it profitable. Trade in goods boomed from the early 1800s as the steam impulse was augmented by later developments like steel hulls, diesel engines, containerized cargo ships, air cargo, and worldwide trade liberalization. These advances lowered the cost of moving ideas and people as well, but not in a revolutionary way. Strangely enough, as production dispersed across nations in this first phase of globalization, it clustered within nations into factories and industrial districts. This microclustering wasn’t done to save trade costs; it was done to save on communication costs—namely, the cost of moving ideas.

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, bank run, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, bonus culture, business cycle, call centre, central bank independence, centre right, commodity super cycle, computerized trading, corporate governance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, delayed gratification, deskilling, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, full employment, George Akerlof, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, greed is good, income inequality, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Jean Tirole, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, late capitalism, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, negative equity, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, race to the bottom, rent control, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, sovereign wealth fund, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, too big to fail, trade liberalization, urban planning, web of trust, zero-sum game

As with NATO, the central principle of the club was acceptance of reciprocal obligations. To unwind the beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism of the 1930s, another new club was formed: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Between 1947 and 1964 it concluded six rounds of reciprocal trade liberalization. Again, the key driver was enlightened self-interest; everyone recognized where protectionism had led. In response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, a further new club of nations was established. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was a public bank into which a defined membership paid, undertook to abide by a set of rules and supervision, and in return were entitled to loans in the event of crisis.

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, friendshoring, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

However, if you include all the taxes that mostly reduce incomes at the top and the transfers that add more at the bottom, the difference is reduced from 16.7 to just four times as much.20 Globally, of course, inequality is more conspicuous, but thanks to the fact that low- and middle-income countries have grown faster than rich countries during the era of trade liberalization and international supply chains, global income inequality has decreased for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. This is a monumental change, and it has been dizzyingly quick. Betwee n 2000 and 2018 the global Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality, rated from 1 to 100) decreased from seventy to sixty points, thus erasing a hundred-year build-up of global inequality in less than two decades.21 Nor have we seen a rapid increase in global inequality in assets.

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, moral hazard, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, paradox of thrift, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Skype, South China Sea, special drawing rights, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Elsewhere in the world, free-market philosophies were seemingly contributing to financial instability: most striking was the Asian Crisis of 1997/98 – which hit Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Hong Kong hard, even as communist China emerged relatively unscathed – and the broader emerging-market upheavals that followed. The phrase ‘Washington Consensus’ – which originally referred to a ten-point plan involving, inter alia, fiscal discipline, tax reform, trade liberalization, open cross-border capital markets, property rights and privatization3 – was reinterpreted pejoratively as a symbol of US ‘neo-liberalism’, leading to huge criticism of the post-war Washington-based institutions that, in earlier decades, had done so much to foster economic stability. Multilateral trade talks stalled.

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel Iii, John Seely Brown

Albert Einstein, Andrew Keen, barriers to entry, Black Swan, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, creative destruction, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, future of work, game design, George Gilder, intangible asset, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, loose coupling, Louis Pasteur, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Marc Benioff, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Network effects, old-boy network, packet switching, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, pre–internet, profit motive, recommendation engine, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart transportation, software as a service, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, TSMC, Yochai Benkler

First, during the Depression in the 1930s, business leaders in major developed economies around the world were motivated to exploit the capabilities of new communication and transportation infrastructures more effectively to harness scalable efficiency and compete during a period of stagnant or declining demand. Second, during the 1950s, another generation of business leaders broadened their horizons to scale push programs beyond national boundaries to take advantage of trade liberalization and to serve global markets. It is no coincidence that the famous British economist Ronald Coase wrote his path-breaking essay, “The Nature of the Firm,” in 1937.4 He effectively captured the primary thrust of institution-building during this period, arguing that firms existed to reduce the transaction costs that made coordinating activity across independent entities difficult.

The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon-based life, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, deliberate practice, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, sustainable-tourism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, urban planning, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus

When Africans desire to rediscover and reclaim their own culture, they're often obliged to travel to European and American libraries and archives for the information. It isn't unusual to find that foreigners know more about the native peoples than the latter know about themselves. Such is often the fate of the colonized. Africans have been shaped by many experiences: invasion, the slave trade, liberation, discrimination, and apartheid; the arrival of literacy, Christianity, and Islam; and deculturalization and displacement. Some were beneficial and revolutionized the African way of life; others were destructive. All these experiences have touched and shaped the African psyche. Perhaps because of the intensity, frequency, and persistence of these challenges, it has been more difficult for the African spirit to overcome them than it has been for other peoples who experienced similar upheavals.

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future by Geoffrey Cain

airport security, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, anti-communist, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Snowden, European colonialism, fake news, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global supply chain, Kickstarter, land reform, lockdown, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, phenotype, pirate software, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, South China Sea, speech recognition, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, trade route, undersea cable, WikiLeaks

Given the global nature of our operations, it is not possible for us to monitor the use or application of all products we manufacture.”25 But reports in Chinese state media quoted Thermo Fisher executives enthusiastically welcoming business opportunities in China. “We are encouraged by President Xi Jinping’s speech… and very grateful to the Chinese government’s support of global trade liberalization and opening-up,” Tony Acciarito, president of Thermo Fisher Scientific China, was quoted saying in state media outlet China Daily in November 2018. “We are also glad to learn that President Xi holds fully optimistic [sic] attitude toward China’s economic development.”26 Munsterhjelm looked back on the situation with a mixture of disgust and exasperation.

Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace by Matthew C. Klein

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, intangible asset, invention of the telegraph, joint-stock company, land reform, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, passive income, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, Wolfgang Streeck