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Donald Trump's radical prices dominate major titles and trigger a trade war – but international trade policy, its theoretical foundations and its impact on ordinary people have long been the subject of debates. Here are five books that offer a range of perspectives and proposals for the past 20 years.
Why politicians lie on trade. . . And what you need to know by Dmitry Grozoubinksi (2024, Canbury)
Presented as a guide to international commerce, Grozoubinksi's book lights its serious mission lightly. In entertaining reading, the former Australian government's trade official illustrates how global trade policy affects the lives of ordinary citizens – and aims to play his role in the equipment of non -specialists in the knowledge they need to examine the arguments of lobbyists and legislators more rigorously. After all, as he wrote in a disturbing way: “Although you may have chosen to be very interested in commercial policy, trade policy is increasingly interested in you.”
Commercial wars are class wars By Matthew C Klein and Michael Pettis (2020, Yale University Press)
The authors, commentator of the Barron's economy and financing professor at Guanghua School of Management of the University of Beijing, analyze the history of the United States, China and Germany in the last three decades to build their argument according to which upheavals in the leading economies in the context of the main economies. They illustrate, as Martin Wolf wrote in his review in 2020, that “the overall balance of goods and services is explained by savings, investment and capital flows, not by bilateral commercial sales, as imagined by Donald Trump”.
Most favored mediams of the nations: ego-affrontations, swollen ambitions and the major ruins of the global trade system by Paul Blustein (2009, public affairs)
The Multilateral Trade Multilateral Trade Medico -Legal Medic -Legal Relax – which the FT editorial committee has described as “one of the longest pranks in the development of global policies” – could have been even more overwhelming if he had written it six years later, when the WTO finally declared it dead. The veteran economy journalist depicts an image of reverse losses and disappointments, sketching a colorful distribution of characters along the way. A particularly notable theme, underlined Alan Beattie in his review, is that “the WTO is a terrible body to carry out negotiations”.
Dispute the scale: development strategy from a historical perspective By Ha-Joon Chang (2002, Anthem Press)
Chang studies the historical pressures applied to developing countries “to adopt a set of” good policies “and” good institutions “to promote their economic development”, largely motivated by what had worked over the centuries for the greatest Anglo-American powers. In his analysis, he breaks down the debate on the question of whether the same “theoretically based proposals (for example, free advantages of all countries)” are appropriate for modern growth economies.
No business is free: change course, follow China and help American workers By Robert Lighthizer (2023, Broaddside / HarperCollins)
No job is free Classiation of the protectionist side of the debate: Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative in the first Trump administration, has taken prices on China in 2018. Here, he writes that the “radical free trade program” of the last two decades has been an anomaly for the United States, which as “all the big economies” was “built behind a protection wall and often with government money”. A desire to see America moving from consumption mainly to construction and manufacturing is the heart of the long -standing view of the republican. Perhaps the most contrastable, he pleads to rebalance the country's trade deficit with China.
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This is a lesson that you hope that adolescent readers take on board / / By William Perrin, Watlington, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
