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The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to..

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I HAVE READ THIS BOOK--every word. Criticisms by many reviewers here show they didn't read it at all or perhaps only partially.

This book brilliantly sheds the shackles of revisionist history and documents the successes of economic protectionism. Buchanan shows how Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has been completely misread by free traders. He quotes Milton Friedman who says that Smoot-Hawley had nothing to do with the stock market crash. (It crashed 8 months BEFORE the tariff bill was even passed!)

Mr. Buchanan's solutions are not completely wrapped up in tariffs, as another reviewer stated. He forgot to read the final chapter where Buchanan outlines a mix of tax, trade, and capital-accumulation policies. Wouldn't you love a tax system that didn't require the burdensome IRS reporting we now have? It's in this book.

If Buchanan's practical policies are implemented, within five years the following would happen: Trade deficits would disappear; vulnerability to global financial crises would vanish; factories would spring up; millions of manufacturing jobs would be created; the demand for American workers and their pay scales would rise; the tax burden on American families would lighten; and America would be more self-reliant (no more OPEC handcuffs).

Buchanan crushes the Ivory Tower theories of free trade economists who should be grateful for the very policies they criticize: job protection! Let's see how they'd feel about "free trade" if their 100% Tenure Tariff were removed. Maybe then their free trade theories would not be so extremist.

There once was a higher value in America than The Bottom Line. It was called Freedom. Reading this book should be a requirement for every history teacher, economics professor and student in America who wants to PROTECT it.

Buchanan has exposed this modern age version of Free Trade for what it is ,a dumb sellout.A trade means to exchange for something comparable and the West has received nothing beneficial
in return for the loss of industries and jobs that have been moved to countries which use starvation wages and dismal human rights and conditions to produce the goods we have produced for many years.Leaving our workers without jobs and the country losing them as taxpayers.After all this, the goods are sold back here at prices no lower than if they had been made here.The idea that this would benefit the workers in these third world countries has been a fraud as the benefits have never been allowed to trickle down.
Free trade has been a monumental failure ,or as Buchanan claims a Betrayal.
The problem with what is going on now is that two Maxims are being ignored:
First;you should never trade for something that you've already got.
and
Second;You can't continue to trade with someone who has a lower standard of living than you have.It will only keep his low or bring yours down.

Any negative review about this book could not have been written by anyone who read it. Buchanan writes about Our Great Nation and its slide into a declining standard of living that has been breaking down the Nation since the age of Free trade in America.

Buchanan documents quite well where America once was economically and socially, and its slow decline into globalization. He makes a good case backed up with solid reason and evidence that America should revert back to a "protectionist" system of trade, whereby tarriffs would be applied to foriegn imports that serve to destoy American industry.

Buchannan makes a case that "protectionism" in the past paid off national debts, brought about a balanced budget, a surplus funds, lower taxes, and a higher standard of living. Buchanan points out that free trade only works when everyone plays by the rules.

The book has solid statistical information and a lot of historical perspectives that most people never learned in school. My only criticsm of this book is the many historical quotes that slowed the book down for me as I reflected on what events were occurring at that time.

No doubt I am a better person for reading Buchanan's perspective

Pat Buchanan's "The Great Betrayal" is an emphatic rallying cry for a renewed economic nationalism. Throughout fifteen myth-shattering chapters, Buchanan unleashes a fury of statistics damning to free-trade and poses some tough questions to its advocates along the way. For instance, was it "free-trade" that transformed thirteen diminutive coastal agrarian colonies into the world's leading industrial superpower? Why is an involuntary income tax a preferable method of gathering revenue than a voluntary 15 percent tariff? (Before 1913, imported goods were taxed at 40 percent while income, savings and investment were taxed at 0 percent. Today, the exact opposite is the case.) Why didn't free-trade, which supposedly eases tension between nations that practice it, prevent Germany from waging war against her chief trading partner, Russia, twice, prevent Japan from attacking both the US and China, who she traded with in the thirties, and prevent the American Civil War, where free-trade was being carried out domestically? What's the point of a trade agreement that is indirectly subsidizing the Chinese military -- which they'll use to invade Taiwan -- by allowing the Devils of Beijing to run up a $80 billion trade surplus? And finally, why are cheap foreign goods more important than high-paying industrial jobs? Needless to say, Buchanan is nothing if not fiercely polemical.

The modern era of free-trade was ushered in, Buchanan contends, in 1967, with the Kennedy Round concessions, but its framework had been layed fifty-four years earlier by a congressman (and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient) from Tennessee named Cordell Hull. Hull authored the Underwood Tariff, which replaced America's primary source of revenue for over a century with the involuntary income tax, thereby establishing the fertilizer of the Leviathan state, the IRS, in the process. Hull's more immediate plans for a world trade conference were postponed by America's entrance into WW1 and the GOP sweep in 1920. And although Hull was later made secretary of state by FDR, both the House and Senate ensured that none of his major globalist schemes saw the light of day. It wasn't until the Eisenhower administration, imbued with a "Marshal Plan mentality," took power that the US began propping up the Japanese economy (cosseted behind a barricade of protective tariffs) by gradually opening their markets during the Cold War to bind Japan to the Free World. (As a way of saying thanks, Toshiba sold US submarine-propeller technology to the USSR in the 1980s.) Japan, whose unregulated car factories were employing workers at a fraction of US wages, were permitted to dump cheap foreign imports at prices US car manufacturers couldn't compete with. By 1970, Japan was selling a million cars in the US, and by the mid-eighties, had captured nearly a quarter of the US auto-market. Thus, Japan's "economic miracle," as Buchanan persuasively argues, was brought about by economic nationalism -- not "free-trade."

Buchanan also points out that classical liberal Adam Smith, who many libertarians not only model themselves after, but approvingly cite as the intellectual architect of free-trade, listed several "exceptions" to unhindered free-trade in his magnum opus "The Wealth of Nations" (pgs 429-36) that have conspicuously gone unnoticed by laissez-fairies. Smith felt that tariffs ought to be imposed as "revenge" on countries who close their markets to Britain, something the US should do to China if we're to follow Smith's wisdom. Additionally, Smith thought tariffs ought to be imposed on foreign goods "for the encouragement of domestic industry," when certain domestic industries are being taxed and the imports they have to compete with are not. Smith's authorative testimony on this issue is especially vindicating to nationalists given his godlike status to frothing-at-the-mouth libertarians.

Buchanan fever -- catch it.

Buchanan's book is a solid though not particularly profound or penetrating defense of protectionism The main thrust of Buchanan's argument is fairly simple. When the United States followed an unapologetically protectionist policy during the nineteenth century, the U.S. economy grew by leaps and bounds. But when the U.S began following a more liberal trade policy, the economy began to decline, especially within the manufacturing, heavy-industry sectors. Buchanan believes that a return to a more protectionist policy would reinvigorate the American economy.

Is Buchanan right? To a large degree. He is mostly right historically. Protectionism did accelerate the growth of the nation's industrial economy. Whether it can help the economy as it stands today is a more difficult question. Economists would have to develop a better understanding of all the economic and social ramifications of protectionism policy. Buchanan is correct in castigating the economic profession for its dogmatic views about free trade. But he has not exactly developed a convincing economic theory to explain why protectionism worked in the past. (He also, incidentally, erroneously tries to defend the protectionism of the twenties and thirties -- the one time in American history when protectionism made no sense.) I admit to finding it hard to regard protectionism as some sort of panacea. At the same time, it is clear that free trade is no panacea either, that both policies have clear problems and difficulties.

The fact remains that most arguments either for or against protectionism are not terribly convincing. The subject is not well understood, largely because the issue confuses moral problems with purely practical problems. Protectionism is a form of spoliation: it is the plunder of consumers on the behalf of specially favored producers. However, merely because protectionism involves what many economists regard as an immoral practice does not mean that it provides no real social utility. Protectionism can make it easier for producers to amass capital (usually a good thing) and it provides a less uncertain environment for investors and entrepreneurs (also a good thing). Moreover, it is critical that a nation protects its capital. The tendency for corporations in the U.S. to export capital abroad in order to take advantage of cheap labor is a very ominous development, and will lead to the decline of America if something is not done to limit or put a stop to it.

Buchanan explains how people who used to have manufacturing jobs in America are suffering financially because service jobs don't pay as well as manufacturing ones mainly because of the low profit margin in the service industry. Not all are going to be able to develop the computer skills to participate in the allegedly lucrative computer economy. There is a widening class division between such people and their tech-savvy counterparts who are making a lot more money. Buchanan brings out a lot of stats that show what a bad economic situation we're in, comparing it to the depression, which is a little hard to swallow-but to each his own stats and his interpretation of them. Through free trade, American workers are put into competition with foreign workers who make 50 cents an hour, have no benefits or environmental protection. American corporations have gone global, seeking cheap labor and ever higher profits. They no longer see themselves as American.

Buchanan likes history and often has a charming, folksy way of telling stories about historical events to make his points. He says that the founding fathers we're very much trade protectionists and kept their tariffs high to protect their industries and economic independence. Alexander Hamilton was the greatest intellectual founding father of economic nationalism and protectionism through the use of tariffs. Tariffs are also a nifty way of picking up revenue for government operations without having to institute an income tax on the people. As soon as tariffs began to be lowered around 1913, the income tax began, because the government has to get its money somewhere. Buchanan says that Adam Smith was not the free trader that free traders say he was. He says that protectionism of trade did not cause the depression and gives his evidence.

Buchanan is against the free traders who have lack loyalty to their nation but whose goal is to have the cheapest products imported by free trade. Free traders think that free trade promotes "WORLD PEACE" and they want to get rid of the nation state and have a global bureacracy take care of us all. They have an almost religious fervor about their free trade dogma and don't like people to say things against it. Buchanan states that having free trade does not make nations more peaceful and shows examples. Besides, nations like China and Japan do not practice free trade but they do take advantage of our free trade policies while they protect their industries and markets from imports. Free trade could be one of the reasons for the decline of the British Empire because they practiced it for so many years. John Maynard Keynes, the famous English economist, was once a avid free trader until he saw what economic damage it was doing to his country.

Buchanan suggests raising tariffs to protect our industries, especially our defense industries, so that we can remain economically independent and will be able to keep our military secrets hidden from other countries. Economic independence was one of the reasons the Revolutionary War was fought. Buchanan doesn't want to save the world--he knows it can't be done--he just wants to save American industry, which still can be done if tariffs are raised.

I knew next to nothing on the subject of free-trade before I read this book, but I must say I feel quite enlightened by the words and experiences or Mr. Buchanan.

He makes an excellent historical case for economic nationalism - a practice embraced by Republicans throughout the 19th century. However, in terms of a modern defense of economic nationalism, I believe Buchanan relies too heavily on anecdotes and not enough on logical arguments.

I happen to agree with Buchanan's conclusion that America and Americans must come first, without apology, in every economic decision our government makes. I only wish he had devoted more words to refuting specific free-trader arguments.

Overall, an excellent book. Buchanan is a wonderful writer and a joy to read. I highly recommend the book to those who want to get familiar with the globalism/free-trade vs. protectionism/economic nationalism issue, particularly from a conservative populist perspective.

"The Great Betrayal" was written by an intellectual sojourner - a man who believed and preached free trade for the bulk of his life but has now changed his mind. Even if you've read and studied economics for years, it's hard to find anyone who challenges the orthodoxy of the free-trade movement as well as Patrick Buchanan. Many who are firmly in the economic camp of international free trade may find that they've only heard one side of the story from our media, government, and schools when they read this book. Personally, this book has changed my mind on global free trade - quite unexpected for what started out as a casual read.

The discussion of the Halley-Smoot Tariff Act was the highlight of the book - one can recall the propaganda of high school history texts, and this is brutally exposed with gentle humor - Buchanan's quote from the movie "Farris Bueller's Day Off" (anyone-anyone?) highlighted this well and had me howling with laughter to boot. All but the most biased will be shaking their heads at how quick we are to believe anything if it is just repeated often enough.

Read this book. It's entertaining, factual, and honest.

This fabulous book dares to explain the insidious fallacy of Globalism and its greedy step child "free trade". It strikes at the core of the elitist false "religions" of globalist neo-conservatism on the Right and New World Order globalism on the Left ! It tells why Wall Street success no longer trickles down to Main Street. It also explains why so many middle sized cities are in trouble in today's so called "great economy". This book will explain why middle class America may be doomed to third world status in the near future under an outright wage squeeze. A must read for everyone who feels that economic "chill" and "squeeze" in the air. An eyeopener!

I have now read two of his campaign books that he used to spell out his agenda when he was running for President. When I first heard about the books I wondered if I could learn anything form them or were they just him ranting on about his ultra conservative ways. Well it turns out that he fills these books up with a great deal of American history on the subject at hand. This book focuses on trade, ok not normally the most thrilling topic, but he does make it interesting. The one concern I have is that is he telling me only the history that suits his basic point? Well if you read the book I do not think this is the case, re represents both the policies that agree with his position and do not agree. Sure he is bias, but overall I think reasonably fair.

His basic focus is that the standard of living based on the work the average American does is slipping due to the free trade push that has been happening the last 20 years in America. His argument is that if a business can close its shop in the US and move it to a third world country for a fraction of the employee cost that the people left in the US not only lose a good job that is never coming back but the rest of us lose to because of the reduced tax revenue the government receives from the income tax that worker paid. His solution to this problem is a goods tax on anything made outside the US. A rather article position for a life long conservative. He makes some good points, but I am not well enough versed in global economics to really make a case if he is correct or not. Overall the book is interesting, but can at times be a bit dry.