Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed [Hardcover]

Sherrod Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004

From the ranking Democrat on the House's Commerce committee, a myth-busting guide to free-trade ideology —ten years after NAFTA.

"We discovered that the Chilean government had hired Bob Dole to represent them against U.S. salmon farmers. Dole had served as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel with jurisdiction over trade. After my office alerted the media, Dole angrily demanded to know who that Ohio Congressman was who had outed him." —from Myths of Free Trade

• Myth #1: Corporate globalization is inevitable
• Myth #2: Free-trade agreements help fight the war on terrorism
• Myth #3: Free trade leaves most people better off — rich or poor
• Myth #4: Free trade will bring democracy, human rights, and freedom to authoritarian governments
• Myth #5: NAFTA has been a success
• Myth #6: Free trade is a great American tradition

From the editorial pages of the New York Times to the streets of Argentina, ever more people are questioning the extravagant claims made on behalf of free trade. Now Sherrod Brown, a leading progressive member of Congress, takes apart the free-trade faith, myth by myth, providing a front-row seat to the widescreen spectacle of corporate lobbying and political intimidation that keeps the free-trade mantra alive as American policy, despite all evidence that free trade is failing.

Ten years after NAFTA, free-trade policies have not brought prosperity to Mexican workers, and more than one million American jobs have been lost. Brown draws on his travels to meet with Mexican maquiladora workers and laid-off Americans —as well as visits paid to him by corporate lobbyists —to take on the free-trade proselytizers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brown, a Democratic congressman from northeastern Ohio’s steel belt, is a veteran of legislative battles—described here in gory, arm-twisting detail—over NAFTA, GATT and other trade agreements, and in this impassioned polemic, he rebuts the usual rationales offered by free traders. Our current free trade agenda, Brown insists, is an un-American departure from a history of tariffs and government intervention aimed at developing the nation’s economy and protecting workers and the environment from the excesses of the market. He contends that free trade doesn’t promote growth in either developed or developing countries, but simply shifts well-paying American jobs to Third World sweatshops. There, miserably underpaid workers, denied workplace safety regulations or the right to unionize, can’t buy the products they make, which creates imbalances of supply over demand and thus contributes to global economic stagnation. Rather than spreading American values around the globe, he argues, free trade buttresses the power of authoritarian regimes like China’s. Indeed, in Brown’s view, no one benefits from unregulated trade except corporations and rich investors, eager to deploy their assets wherever labor and the environment are most profitably exploited. Although not systematically developed, Brown’s fact-filled argument is a cogent critique of American trade policies in a punchy left-populist style that is rarely heard in Washington these days.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Congressman Sherrod Brown has represented Ohio's 13th Congressional District since 1992 and serves on the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. He is the author of Congress from the Inside. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Cleveland, Ohio.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; 1st edition (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565849280
• ISBN-13: 978-1565849280
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,348,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Congressman speaks freely on the evils of free trade, November 27, 2004

By 

mallard "calvin" (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed (Hardcover)

What's in a word? Plenty, when that word is the adjective "free" in front of the noun "trade." The positive connotations of "free" have clouded the debate between free traders and those wanting to protect specific U.S. industries through regulation of foreign imports.

In "Myths of Free Trade," U.S. Rep. Sher rod Brown, the Lorain Demo crat, puts to work the con siderable knowledge he has gained through his efforts on the House subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer protection to make his argument against untrammeled free trade.

He maintains that he is on the side of the angels, and that the mass public supports his views, no matter how often political and media elites label him an extremist know-nothing.

If leaders of our institutions would take the time to listen to people who work with their hands, they might learn something about the reasons for workers' anxiety, about the hopelessness with which many look to the future, and about social justice," Brown writes. "And they would see that unregulated free trade hurts more people than it helps - not only in the United States, but throughout the world."

Brown argues that an unregulated global economy does not automatically operate efficiently according to some magic formula of American capitalism. He goes further to say that the harm of free trade outweighs any benefits.

Those harmed include a Cleveland-area child "who eats raspberries grown in Guatemala by poorly paid farmers who use pesticides banned in the United States; the unskilled, minimum-wage worker in Los Angeles who loses her job to an unskilled, five-dollar-a-day worker in Yucatan; the machinist in New York who takes a wage cut because of his company's threat to move to China and the Chinese prison camp laborer; the tomato grower in Florida who has to sell his farm; and the peasant in Chiapas who must flee the native village where his family had made its home for dozens of generations."

Brown criticizes both political parties for what he sees as blindness to the facts and wonders about the gullibility of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, about economics professors, about journalists and about his colleagues in Congress.

Wondering about so many allegedly misguided souls, Brown can sound self-righteous at times. That tone, however, is ameliorated by the quality of his evidence. He might not be correct in some cosmic sense, and he might not convert anybody already on the other side of the debate. But his examples are plausible and well-presented.

"Our political leaders support - and excuse - authoritarian leaders in China and Indonesia because our corporate leaders have identified these totalitarian societies as ideal places to invest and reap huge profits, almost always selling back into the U.S. market the goods that slave labor or underpaid workers produce," he writes. "Big business has ignored or put aside Chinese human rights abuses, security threats, theft of intellectual property and loss of American jobs."

Trade policy is a hot-button issue when jobs come or go because of it. It is difficult, though, to explain the ideas undergirding trade policy. Here, Brown delivers information about an issue usually under the media radar.

14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, September 2, 2005

By 

Robert J. Kimber "Rob Kimber 'the rational li... (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed (Hardcover)

This is a tremendously informative and well written book. Short and to the point and in a language that anybody can understand, it should be required reading for anyone vaguely interested in the economic future of America and, indeed, the whole world.
Mr. Brown's book is not a populist war cry but a sensible and well reasoned debunking of all the "free trade" rhetoric one normally hears.
One warning: This book may well leave the reader angry with the status quo!

15 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Adam Smith and David Ricardo would oppose globalization, January 19, 2006

By 

Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed (Hardcover)

Brown,a Democrat and a liberal,has written a very good book on the severe deficiencies(for instance,the vast number of workers ,who obtain jobs in second and third world countries as a result of outsourcing and globalization, are paid incomes that are far too small to buy any American exports at all.The result is the creation of additional excess supply and decreases in the standard of living everywhere brought on by deficiencies in aggregate purchasing power)that exist as a result of globalization.The same deficiencies were noted by Ross Perot in three books written in 1992,by Pat Buchanan in 1998 in his "The Great Betrayal",and by Lou Dobbs in his recent "Exporting America:How Corporate Greed is Shipping American Jobs Overseas".All three are authentic conservatives who have broken with a Republican party establishment that has,since 1978, substituted the libertarian anarchist globalization arguments of Grover Norquist,Murray Rothbard,Milton Friedman,Ayn Rynd,Ludwig von Mises,Fredrich von Hayek,Arthur Laffer,and George Gilder for those of conservatives such as Adam Smith,David Ricardo,George Washington,Alexander Hamilton,Douglas MacArthur,Dwight D Eisenhower,and ,yes,Richard Nixon.Unfortunately,the title of the book was poorly chosen.There is a sound and valid free trade position that opposes the special interests of oligopolistic industries.A better title for the book would have been"Globalization is not Free Trade:The Myth of Globalization".Authentic free trade is based on comparative advantage,not the absolute advantage that is the foundation of the libertarian anarchist argument for globalization.Unfortunately,B does not deal with the fact that Smith and Ricardo would be opponents of globalization(Only Dobbs mentions this fact).Globalization is not free trade,as free trade is automatically defined within the context of the theory of comparative advantage.It is of vital importance that anyone concerned about the misrepresentation of the authentic free trade position read Part IV, chapter II,pp.420-440 of The Wealth of Nations.For instance,Smith is opposed to tariffs (and quotas)only if it is the case that the purpose of the tariff is purely protectionist(sought by a special interest group of oligopolistic manufacturers)in nature.Smith would support retaliatory tariffs against countries engaging in obvious protectionist behavior,such as violations of GATT,manipulation of international currency values and/or massive dumping,such as China,India,and Mexico, as long as there is some probability that the counter tariff"...will procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of"(Smith,p.435,Modern Library edition).Only if there is no probability of getting the offending country to stop its behavior would Smith forgo retaliation.Finally,Smith is a moderate supporter of the revenue tariff,on balance. He imposed such tariffs when he became a customs official in Scotland.We can end this review by taking Jack Kemp as an example of a conservative who has been completely misled/confused by the substitution of the libertarian,athiest,anarchist arguments of the two von's,Mises and Hayek,for the moral,conservative,deist arguments of Adam Smith.Libertarian Anarchism has nothing to do with conservatism.These philosophies are completely opposed on political,social, and economic grounds.This was the case at the beginnings of our Republic.Washington,Hamilton,Madison,Jay,Franklin,and Adams are the conservatives.Mason,Randolph,Henry,and Paine are the libertarians.