Why Globalization Works for America: How Nationalist Trade Policies Are Destroying Our Country
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Blue-collar job loss, immigration, trade deficits—Americans blame globalization for a host of problems. Indeed, even in a political system split by fundamental divisions, populists and progressives alike belong to a chorus that decries globalization’s effects on our politics, way of life, and interactions with the world. Yet the United States is the biggest beneficiary of the global economy it has helped to create.
Edward Goldberg argues that globalization is the economic and cultural version of evolution, a natural process that pushes people into more efficient behavior influenced by the market and our human need to explore, change, and grow. Properly implemented, it propels cultures and societies forward as one new idea challenges or blends into another. Harmful nationalist policies have arisen because Americans do not equally share globalization’s benefits, a situation made worse by the government’s refusal to implement policies that would mitigate the rampant inequalities.
In his book, Why Globalization Works for America: How Nationalst Trade Policies Are Destroying our Country, he write, "Globalization is here to stay and "all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the Humpty Dumpty of yesterday's nonglobalized world back together again," The growing economic inequality in the United States often attributed to globalism is really a political failure, Goldberg goes on to say, it didn't have to be this way. When previous revolutionary business changes upended the American economy, government responded. The industrialization of the second half of the 1800s gave us robber barons and monopolies, which in turn triggered progressive reforms to ease gross inequality, such as the graduated income tax, direct election of Senators and the secret ballot. The misery created by the Great Depression led to another series of reforms, such as Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Security and Exchange Commission.
This time, a polarized political system has failed to produce solutions, Goldberg writes. Indeed, the candidate who talked most about the growing political divide in 2016, Donald Trump, has done nothing to address the problem but has made matters worse by stoking the fears of the white working class and instituting new tariffs that complicate the global supply chain, which in turn, trigger escalating tariffs by other nations.
A bold challenge to popular opinion, Why Globalization Works for America offers a historically informed analysis of why we should celebrate globalization’s place in our lives.
Author
Edward Goldberg (edwardgoldberg.info ) is one of the leading experts on the interplay between global politics and global economics. Tom Friedman of the New York Times tweeted out about his new book, CHECK OUT EDWARD GOLDBERG'S NEW BOOK ON GLOBALIZATION. VERY SMART ANALYST! Goldberg spent his entire life moving between the worlds of academia, international trade and trade finance, he has a unique and realistic understanding of globalization and international-political economics. He is a Adjunct Professor at New York University's Center for Global Affairs specializing in international political economy and a scholarly practitioner at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) .