Thoughts on the Globalization Paradox
This was a super interested book about the world economy, trade, economic growth, and globalization.
I’m majoring in Econ, so I had some sort of foundation to be reading this book, although through reading it I was a bit dismayed by the number of important and interesting bits of information and history that I had not learned in school.
The Brett and Woods agreement, for instance, guided multiple decades of economic policy and I had never even heard of it before reading the book.
I think those with a heavy Econ background that understand a ton would have taken different things from this book (likely less) than me. Anyone with my foundation or lower — like even zero econ background- would have enjoyed it, I believe.
It was a bit dense, and patience through the book is needed to really get everything out of it, especially if econ is 100% foreign, but it was thought-provoking nonetheless.
It talked about the impact that open trade has and how, although there are some who think countries should just be entirely open, that is not always the best option. They gave examples of countries, including Japan, China, the US, and even way smaller ones that have grown or failed due to a bunch of different economic and trade models.
Some countries that have killed it by being totally closed off to start, building enough strong industry inside and then opening up as well as countries that have always been open.
It seems like economic growth, from the perspective of globalization and trade, does not have one singular best foundation. It is very dependent on the country, happenstance, skills, and so forth. That makes a lot of sense, but was not something I had thought much about before.
The different examples and policies were interesting as well as the role that international organizations (like the IMF) can/should have in regulating all of these things.
One interesting anecdote was this idea that in the US we have all of these rules on wages — have to pay a certain salary, certain conditions and so forth. Yet, we are comfortable (maybe not on an individual level, but societally speaking), buying clothes and other products that are just being outsources to countries where the labor laws are way worse.
So then is it any better to have that production coming out of China at the terrible conditions that exist there versus giving someone in the US the same conditions (or even a bit better) and letting them do that instead of having no job at all? Sort of interesting to ask, ethically. And there are lots of paradoxes in that realm of how we are making these economic-wide choices.
Overall
This book, overall, made me realize the importance of these economic policies on the lives of so many. It begged very interesting questions of trade that have been very present in the news today with tariffs and everything happening. Plus, I think those questions will become increasingly important moving forward.
If you want a sort of dense econ book about trade and globalization, this is a great one to pick.
Thoughts on this review/the book in general? Comment or send me a note :)
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