Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters

"My approach, in general, to choosing books for this list was not so much to focus on the technical minutiae of tariffs. The average person does not need to know the intricacies of customs valuation in order to understand the broader debate that’s going on here and how tariffs are used as a policy tool. What I do think it’s important for people to grasp is this much broader meta-narrative. We have transformed our economies to work in certain ways, the most commonly known of which is through globalization, where things are made all over the world in collaborative value chains. I think it’s very important to understand that discussion and where that’s coming from. And what I think Nicholas and Andrea do fantastically is provide, in a neutral way, the meta-narratives of looking at this issue. Whether you are a free market libertarian or a protectionist, or if you’re someone who’s very focused on the environment, they look at the process from six different windows, and provide what I think is a really fair version of the critiques and defences of globalization. Globalization is not some religion. You don’t have to believe in it through faith. But a lot of the critiques that are out there aren’t always super well informed or holistic. By the time you finish this book, you will be equipped with the best and most thoughtful arguments about globalization, so that you can make up your own mind about the general concept. I think understanding these arguments will help someone understand more when it comes up in policymaking. When someone suggests doing one thing and not the other, it will help you to understand how to conceptualize that. Absolutely. Professor Lamp would be the first to say this is not necessarily his critique of globalization, or Anthea’s. What they do is corral the critiques of others. For example, there is the environmental critique of externalization—out of sight, out of mind—this idea that often when we pass environmental regulations, what we’re effectively saying is that you can’t produce these things in a dirty way domestically anymore. What that does is raise costs for producers. Almost always, the dirtiest way of doing things is, at least in the short term, the most cost-efficient. Being clean and being responsible is more expensive. But in a globalized economy where our regulations end at our borders, but supply chains don’t, there is a real critique to be made, asking whether, effectively, we are just incentivising foreign countries, especially developing countries, who desperately need the income and the capital, to keep their regulations low in order to attract the factories that we’re turning our nose up at. These factories overseas then sell the produce back to us. That’s an example of something that they pick up on, the sort of negative externalities of trade and globalization. But every perspective comes with its own critique, and I think that they’re quite salient."