Lord Keynes — Trump on the Free Market

When was the last time a Republican president was so hostile to free trade and dismissed the usual “free market” apologetics as the “dumb market”?

It would be so much better if he had said something like this:

“I love free trade in principle, OK? But, in practice, we just don’t have it, OK? We just don’t have it. Everybody cheats. China cheats. Japan cheats. The Europeans cheat. So therefore we need to be smart, and have fair trade, and protect American jobs and manufacturing. And, if we need tariffs, then that’s smart trade.”

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
Trump on the Free Market
Lord Keynes

Bill Mitchell — The case against free trade – Part 3

This blog continues my mini-series of free trade. In Part 1, I showed how the mainstream economics concept of ‘free trade’ is never attainable in reality and so what goes for ‘free trade’ is really a stacked deck of cards that has increasingly allowed large financial capital interests to rough ride over workers, consumers and undermine the democratic status of elected governments. In Part 2, I considered the myth of the free market, the damage that ‘free trade’ causes’. The aim of this mini-series is to build a progressives case for opposition to moves to ‘free trade’ and instead adopt as a principle the concept of ‘fair trade’, as long as it doesn’t compromise the democratic legitimacy of the elected government. This is a further instalment to the manuscript I am currently finalising with co-author, Italian journalist Thomas Fazi. The book, which will hopefully be out soon, traces the way the Left fell prey to what we call the globalisation myth and formed the view that the state has become powerless (or severely constrained) in the face of the transnational movements of goods and services and capital flows. In this blog (Part 3 and final) I consider the concept of ‘fair trade’ as an alternative to the current situation where modern democracies demonstrate an unwillingness to resist the ever-increasing demands of global capital to cede democratic legitimacy in favour of corporate profits....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

The case against free trade – Part 3

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

James Carden — Trump, Trade and War

Neoliberal dogma holds that “free trade” brings peace and thus Donald Trump’s criticism of trade deals presages war. But that view is not only bad history but ignores valid points that Trump raises, says James W. Carden….

Consortium News
Trump, Trade and War

James Carden

Bill Totten — Trade is War

On June 3rd at De Balie in Amsterdam, ‘angry old man’ Yash Tandon presented his new book Trade is War: The West’s War Against the World (2015) – a new perspective in the debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the controversial trade agreement which the EU is currently negotiating with the US. In Europe, opponents of TTIP are mainly concerned about transparency, ever-increasing corporate power and the impact on the environment. But what does the treaty imply for North-South relations and what are the geopolitical dynamics behind it?

The debate on Trade is War – organised by TNI, SOMO and Both ENDS – places TTIP in a broader perspective. Tandon passes a devastating judgement on free trade. “Since colonial times, global trade has been aimed at Western world domination”.…

The nascent US realized that the British system of "free trade" was for the benefit of the British Empire and not the countries it was supposed to benefit. Hence, the American system of tariffs and protection of infant industries under which the US prospered was developed, based on Alexander Hamilton's American School of Economics and the National School of Friedrich List and Henry Carey.

Now that the British empire has morphed into the American empire, the US is pushing the British system to maintain and extend Western dominance.
 
Bill Totten's Weblog

Trade is War
Bill Totten

Richard A. Werner and Vladimir I. Yakunin — Are Sanctions Saving Russia?

Are sanctions saving Russia [from Dutch disease]. In a word, yes. As Putin said, it was a gift. There will be a somewhat difficult transition period, but Russia would not have undertaken it otherwise. And it is necessary to take Russia to the next level of development not merely as a great power militarily but also as a major economic player globally.

Project Syndicate
Are Sanctions Saving Russia?

Richard A. Werner is Chair in International Banking at the University of Southampton and author of New Paradigm in Macroeconomics, and Vladimir I. Yakunin is Chair in State Policy at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Founding President of the World Public Forum, and former Chairman of Russian Railways

See also

The Telegraph
Russia abandons hope of oil price recovery and turns to the plough
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Joseph E. Stiglitz and Adam S. Hersh — The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade

As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems.

You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for “free trade.” The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about “free” trade.…

Project Syndicate
The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade
Joseph E. Stiglitz and Adam S. Hersh