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

~ (Author) "It was a bitter cold day in December of 1995..." (more)
Key Phrases: corporate revenue tax, great protectionist, auto pact, United States, Adam Smith, White House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Political pundit and two-time Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is best known for his sharp-edged cultural conservatism. The Great Betrayal, however, is an economic manifesto that promotes what Buchanan calls "economic nationalism." Buchanan believes that free trade serves the interests of Wall Street, not Main Street. Transnational corporations rake in huge profits, but ordinary Americans see few benefits. Instead, they suffer from free trade's bad consequences: flat wages for workers, increased drug trafficking, and environmental deterioration. Markets should serve people, says Buchanan, not the other way around. "The economy is not the country; the country comes first," he writes. Buchanan offers a protectionist political agenda--one that many modern conservatives may not like, but one that Buchanan says puts him in the fine tradition of Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. A forceful polemic challenging elite economic opinion. -- John J. Miller

From Library Journal

Everyone's favorite right winger clobbers the global economy.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316115185
• ISBN-13: 978-0316115186
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #632,007 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FREE TRADE EXTREMISTS: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU REVIEW IT!, July 1, 2000

By	Cherilyn Gulbrandsen (New Canaan, CT United States) - See all my reviews

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.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A crippling blow to the transnational Robber Barons, December 28, 2001

By	"johnthirdearl" (Lynnwood, WA United States) - See all my reviews

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.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally! A Dissenting Voice on the Benefits of Free-Trade, July 5, 1999

By A Customer

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.