Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy

"Dani Rodrik is somebody who, for a long time, has been cautioning about the very gung-ho attitude many economists had towards liberalising trade, including financial flows. For a long time, certainly up until the financial crisis and for a bit afterwards, he was a bit of an outlier among economists because, for most economists, more free trade is without question better. I think now a lot more people would take that point of view. I think I, for one, was much too relaxed about the effects of globalisation and how quickly it was happening and what effects that might have on the economy and people’s livelihoods. It’s not that I’ve changed my mind about it being a good thing—but I’ve become much more cautious about how quickly change happens and the need to be much more nuanced rather than just saying, ‘More trade is better.’ “Dani Rodrik is somebody who, for a long time, has been cautioning about the very gung-ho attitude many economists had towards liberalising trade, including financial flows” So he’s gone from being a bit of a maverick to being a really very influential voice in this debate. The book is a summary of a lot of things that he has said in the past about that and then the new context of a more protectionist world, post-financial crisis, but also post-Trump and post-Brexit, where the political mood has certainly changed. It’s largely about trade and for anybody who has read his academic papers, a lot of it will be quite familiar. There’s also quite a bit, again, about what economists do and what economists can validly say—you know, where we should be more humble than we have been in the past. So it’s another book that’s a little bit about the state of economics itself. About trade but particularly about finance and the financialization of the world economy that happened post-1980, really. Capital flows, in particular, he would single out as being an area where we ought to be incredibly cautious in saying, ‘This is a good thing for the economy.’ Yes, he has a famous ‘trilemma,’ which is about not being able to get everything you want at the same time in international economics—something has to give. Yes, it’s a great introduction. He is another really clear writer, so it’s very accessible. He’s probably still a bit outside the mainstream in his views about this, but he’s somebody who has been much more ‘right’ than many other economists and should absolutely be taken seriously about this."