Oct. 14, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: World Trade Organization Dissected in Paul Blustein's 'Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations'
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Just over four years ago, on July 1, 2005, I reviewed Paul Blustein's "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)," his analysis of Argentina's 2001 Financial Collapse. (Link: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/events/050701-kinchen-bookreview.html).
I praised it for its readability about a complex financial subject: explaining the workings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). I said it would appeal to policy and financial wonks, but could be understood by most readers. Especially if they read it more than once!
The same is true of Blustein's latest book, from the same publisher, "Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System" (PublicAffairs, 352 pages, $26.95).
Blustein chronicles the actions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), based in Geneva, Switzerland, which on January 1, 1995 replaced the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947.
Ideally, the WTO regulates trade between participating countries -- 153 of them at last count -- providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements between member countries. Blustein writes that as a linchpin of global capitalism the WTO is both revered and reviled.
Ten years ago, it was reviled, to say the least, with violent demonstrations in Seattle where the WTO was meeting. The violent demonstrations have been dubbed "The Battle of Seattle." It's safe to say that Seattle is high on the WTO's list of places where they don't want to meet, ever. The 1999 WTO ministerial meeting and the subsequent demonstrations inspired a 2007 film "Battle in Seattle," with Ray Liotta ("Goodfellas") playing the mayor of Seattle.
The Seattle protesters -- along with those at other WTO meetings -- consider the organization the prime cause for world wide hunger, disease and mass death. The protests got out of hand and the demonstrators battled the Seattle Police Department and the National Guard after a state of emergency was declared.
Free trade is one of those ideas that everybody -- almost everybody, a lot of people, maybe a few -- think is good, as long as it doesn't interfere with protection for American and European Union farmers, for just one example. This protection in the form of subsidies to cotton farmers in the U.S., for example, doesn't help small cotton farmers in West Africa or big ones in Brazil.
In more than seven years of the Doha Development Rounds -- named for the Gulf Emirates country where the WTO met a few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- the WTO has tried and failed to resolve differences between rich and developing nations. Since the late 2007-early-2008 collapse of the world's financial system, he writes, the trade picture has gotten even murkier, if that's possible, with a rise in protectionism and a sharp decline in trade worldwide. It doesn't help that many observers believe that China -- starting in 1995 pegged its currency, the yuan, to the dollar at 8.28 per U.S. dollars, benefiting Chinese manufacturers and beggaring U.S. ones.
Throughout the book, Blustein interviews ordinary people affected by the WTO, from clothing workers in Central American sweatshops to farmers in Brazil and West Africa to an auto parts manufacturer in Michigan. The latter, Wes Smith of E&E Manufacturing Co., Plymouth, Michigan, told Blustein that his auto fasteners and components company was suffering because of Beijing's policy of keeping the value of the yuan tightly controlled at a level, "he said, gave Chinese manufacturers an unfair advantage." He told Blustein: "It's not that we're competing against the so-called dollar-a-day wage; it's that they [China] subsidize their production with currency manipulation."
Blustein's fly-on-the-wall look at the directors-general of the WTO, along with his profiles of trade negotiators like Charlene Barshefsky, "Pope Bob" Zoellick (since 2007 the successor to Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank), Rob Portman, Susan Schwab and Ron Kirk -- to name just the U.S. ones -- makes "Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations" a very accessible book on a subject that few people understand. With the failure of successive negotiating "rounds," the system that guided the opening of the global economy is in danger of collapsing. This is a very important public policy book that deserves wide readership.
About the author: Blustein is journalist in residence at the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. For 20 years he was a staff writer at the Washington Post, where he covered business and economic issues.
Publisher's web site: www.publicaffairsbooks.com
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BOOK REVIEW: World Trade Organization Dissected in Paul Blustein's 'Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations'
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Just over four years ago, on July 1, 2005, I reviewed Paul Blustein's "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)," his analysis of Argentina's 2001 Financial Collapse. (Link: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/events/050701-kinchen-bookreview.html).
I praised it for its readability about a complex financial subject: explaining the workings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). I said it would appeal to policy and financial wonks, but could be understood by most readers. Especially if they read it more than once!
The same is true of Blustein's latest book, from the same publisher, "Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System" (PublicAffairs, 352 pages, $26.95).
Blustein chronicles the actions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), based in Geneva, Switzerland, which on January 1, 1995 replaced the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947.
Ideally, the WTO regulates trade between participating countries -- 153 of them at last count -- providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements between member countries. Blustein writes that as a linchpin of global capitalism the WTO is both revered and reviled.
Ten years ago, it was reviled, to say the least, with violent demonstrations in Seattle where the WTO was meeting. The violent demonstrations have been dubbed "The Battle of Seattle." It's safe to say that Seattle is high on the WTO's list of places where they don't want to meet, ever. The 1999 WTO ministerial meeting and the subsequent demonstrations inspired a 2007 film "Battle in Seattle," with Ray Liotta ("Goodfellas") playing the mayor of Seattle.
The Seattle protesters -- along with those at other WTO meetings -- consider the organization the prime cause for world wide hunger, disease and mass death. The protests got out of hand and the demonstrators battled the Seattle Police Department and the National Guard after a state of emergency was declared.
Free trade is one of those ideas that everybody -- almost everybody, a lot of people, maybe a few -- think is good, as long as it doesn't interfere with protection for American and European Union farmers, for just one example. This protection in the form of subsidies to cotton farmers in the U.S., for example, doesn't help small cotton farmers in West Africa or big ones in Brazil.
In more than seven years of the Doha Development Rounds -- named for the Gulf Emirates country where the WTO met a few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- the WTO has tried and failed to resolve differences between rich and developing nations. Since the late 2007-early-2008 collapse of the world's financial system, he writes, the trade picture has gotten even murkier, if that's possible, with a rise in protectionism and a sharp decline in trade worldwide. It doesn't help that many observers believe that China -- starting in 1995 pegged its currency, the yuan, to the dollar at 8.28 per U.S. dollars, benefiting Chinese manufacturers and beggaring U.S. ones.
Throughout the book, Blustein interviews ordinary people affected by the WTO, from clothing workers in Central American sweatshops to farmers in Brazil and West Africa to an auto parts manufacturer in Michigan. The latter, Wes Smith of E&E Manufacturing Co., Plymouth, Michigan, told Blustein that his auto fasteners and components company was suffering because of Beijing's policy of keeping the value of the yuan tightly controlled at a level, "he said, gave Chinese manufacturers an unfair advantage." He told Blustein: "It's not that we're competing against the so-called dollar-a-day wage; it's that they [China] subsidize their production with currency manipulation."
Blustein's fly-on-the-wall look at the directors-general of the WTO, along with his profiles of trade negotiators like Charlene Barshefsky, "Pope Bob" Zoellick (since 2007 the successor to Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank), Rob Portman, Susan Schwab and Ron Kirk -- to name just the U.S. ones -- makes "Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations" a very accessible book on a subject that few people understand. With the failure of successive negotiating "rounds," the system that guided the opening of the global economy is in danger of collapsing. This is a very important public policy book that deserves wide readership.
About the author: Blustein is journalist in residence at the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. For 20 years he was a staff writer at the Washington Post, where he covered business and economic issues.
Publisher's web site: www.publicaffairsbooks.com
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