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Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why Ian Fletcher Coalition for a Prosperous America, 2011 edition
The old labels that squared "Free Trade" offagainst "Protectionism" hardly seem adequate in today's context, since old habits of thought about them will incline us toward a far too quick and simple prejudgment of an issue of great intricacy and importance. As everyone knows, developments in transportation and communication have in recent decades brought into existence the tornadic winds of global competition, exposing nations, firms and workers to rapid displacement by low-cost producers and workers from parts of the world that used to be effectively quite distant. To those who look only to "economic efficiency," this is praised as "creative destruction"; but those who focus on a desire of particular peoples or localities to retain or develop industries that will not be nullified by the distant competition will seek ways to prevent their being blown away. According to nineteenth-century economist David Ricardo's law of "comparative advantage," all economic actors are assured "something to do," but that something may be very different from the aspirations or the long-term capabilities of a given people.
Ian Fletcher's Free Trade Doesn't Work is among the very best books on the subject. Although the candor of its title, which indicates a clear dissent from the prevailing faith in global markets, may turn many people away, the book is one that everyone, from whatever point of view, will profit from reading. (We say this on the premise that serious readers realize the intellectual insufficiency of reading only what they already believe.) While immensely informative about economic history, the book's main strength is in its straight-forward, in-depth discussion of the vitally important conceptual and policy issues that underlie the subject.
It has become commonplace among those who see the flaws in the Ricardian analysis to praise the brilliance of Ralph Gomory and William Baumol's Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests (2000). Fletcher joins in this, his rationale being that "finally, someone has found a way to translate this eminently practical wisdom [of the anti-free trade position] into the abstruse mathematics economists are prepared to consider 'serious' economics." While we can see from this that the Gomory-Baumol contribution is indeed meaningful, it is a...