Why free trade doesn’t work

Ian Fletcher, author of Why Free Trade Doesn’t Work (discussed previously at VFR), appeared on Thomas Hartmann’s TV show, “Conversations With Great Minds,” to talk about his book. In critiquing free trade, Fletcher is challenging an orthodoxy as profoundly fixed in the mind of the West as the orthodoxy of diversity and white guilt.

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May 30

Paul K. writes:

Thanks for the link to the Ian Fletcher interview, which was most interesting.

I recently listened to a Charlie Rose interview with billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, taped in 1994, three years before his death. Goldsmith, a dynamic personality, was promoting his book, book “The Trap,” part of his unsuccessful campaign against the GATT Treaty and global free trade. Goldsmith made the point that the inevitable result of free trade is to lower wages and cause unemployment in the developed nations, as companies search out ever cheaper sources of labour in developing countries. He points out that instead of measuring progress in terms of mankind’s well-being and social stability, our modern industrial society makes economic growth and the development of new technologies its key goals, whatever the human cost. The link takes you to the first part of the interview, after which other links will come up.

In one segment of the interview, Goldsmith debates Clinton economic adviser Laura Tyson on the merits of free trade. From our vantage point 17 years later, we can see that Tyson’s promises have proven completely false.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 28, 2011 09:35 AM | Send