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Ian Fletcher
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Free Trade Doesn't Work Paperback – January 1, 2010

by Ian Fletcher (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 130 ratings
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"Uniformly insightful, often brilliant, and remarkably readable. Obama's team should read it - and soon. -George C. Lodge, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School " If people will listen, Fletcher's informed voice will help turn the country toward a more promising future. -William Greider, author of Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. " This book is an excellent introduction to these realities and what can be done about them. -Dan DiMicco, Chairman and CEO, Nucor Steel Corporation; author of Steeling America's Future: a CEO's Call to Arms. " This book will be an essential guide to the emerging debate over the wisdom of 'free trade' as a sound policy. -Patrick A. Mulloy, Commissioner, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission; former Assistant Secretary of Commerce. "Ian Fletcher has laid out a powerful critique of so-called 'free trade' theory. -John J. Sweeney, former President, AFL-CIO; author, America Needs a Raise. "A very powerful, passionate, and convincing critique of free trade in an accessible and engaging manner. -Ha-Joon Chang, Cambridge University, author, Kicking away the Ladder. "Up-to-date, comprehensive and very readable. -Jeff Faux, Distinguished Fellow, Economic Policy Institute; author, The Global Class War. "A devastating and powerful indictment of free trade economics. -Gavin Fridell, author, Fair Trade Coffee. This book is aimed at ordinary concerned citizens. It examines why free trade is slowly bleeding America's economy to death and what can be done. It explains why the economics free traders use is false, and what kind of economics justifies protectionism instead. It is critical of the current establishment, but from a bipartisan point of view, so it should satisfy progressives, conservatives, and everyone in between. See www.freetradedoesntwork.com for more information.
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  1. Print length
    344 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    U.S. Business & Industry Counc
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.86 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0578048205
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0578048208
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ U.S. Business & Industry Counc; Later Printing edition (January 1, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0578048205
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0578048208
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.86 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 130 ratings

About the author

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Ian Fletcher

Ian Fletcher

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Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a 2.7-million member organization dedicated to fixing America's trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously a Research Fellow with the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank. Before that, he was an economist in private practice, mostly serving hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. Details about his book Free Trade Doesn't Work may be found at freetradedoesntwork.com.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
130 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Minky
5.0 out of 5 stars Prescient, Cogent, and Intellectually Courageous
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2023
Verified Purchase
Keep in mind that Fletcher wrote and promoted this book back when the free trade consensus was accepted orthodoxy, when center-right and center-left media scoffed at and dismissed anyone who questioned it. Fletcher is a model of clarity and accessibility, systematically exposing the shallowness, shoddiness and downright silliness of the "everyone gains from free trade agreements" bromides that dominated mainstream news in from the 1990s to the mid-2010s. His chapter on the assumptions underlying popular appeals to comparative advantage alone is worth the price of this splendid book.
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Peter Bae
5.0 out of 5 stars Smashing the free trade orthodoxy
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2010
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Like most free traders, I used to think from having taken Econ 101 that the issue of trade policy was a solved problem, elegantly expounded upon by Ricardo. I assumed that anyone deviating from the free trade orthodoxy must have failed to grasp this basic concept. But Mr. Fletcher clearly does, and yet, he disagrees!

"Comparative advantage is thus a wonderfully optimistic construct, and one can certainly see why it would be so appealing. Not only does it appear to explain the complex web of international trade at a single stroke, but it also tells us what to do and guarantees that the result will be the best outcome we could possibly have obtained. It enables a lone economist with a blackboard to prove that free trade is best, always and everywhere, without ever getting her shoes dirty inspecting any actual factories, dockyards, or shops. She does not even need to consult any statistics on prices, production, or wages. The magnificent abstract logic alone is enough. It is actually a pity the theory isn't true."

He goes on to explain the seven dubious assumptions baked into Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage that are necessary to justify its conclusions. Just to expound on one, the theory only studies what happens during an instant in time. But it's not enough to say that your comparative advantage today is in laying bricks--let's be happy with our lot in life--unless tomorrow, you're in the grave. And it doesn't explain how the other guy's advantage got to be writing computer programs. He wasn't born with that advantage; he developed it somehow in an earlier time period when, perhaps, his comparative advantage was in laying bricks and yours was in something more pleasant. The question of how to get from here to there is a critical one that countries like China, Japan, and Korea are tackling aggressively but that free traders don't even think to ask.

Missing in this book are the Luddite, candle industry-protecting critiques of trade that pollute much of the protectionist side of the debate. This bolsters the author's credibility.

After thoroughly discrediting free trade as it is currently practiced by America's policy makers, the author goes on to give his prescription for correcting our trade problems.
11 people found this helpful
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Heimdal
5.0 out of 5 stars This book shows how Free Trade is Destroying the United States
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2013
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Free trade is destroying the United States. Over 60 years of Free Trade has left the industrial base of the United States in a shambles. We now manufacture very few things in this country. Our Asian and European competitors manufacture most of the products we consume.

Contrary to what is asserted in the mainstream media, the trade deficit is a very real debt that will have to be paid back. As the book states, we can pay back this debt in 3 ways. By selling manufactured goods to other nations, best way, or by selling off our assets, like real estate, to foreign nations, or by issuing debt instruments. The last 2 ways of paying off our debt are the worst possible ways in that they generate no benefit to the United States. Real Estate is a finite commodity accumulated over many years, it cannot regenerate itself like selling manufactured goods. Once it's gone, that's it. Debt Instruments are also a very bad way to pay to pay off the debt. We will eventually have to work for free in the future to pay back debt accumulated to purchase foreign goods purchased today.

Do not be deceived by the argument that the United States will always come up with some new industry that exactly replaces the manufacturing jobs lost to free trade. One look at the unemployment statistics will show that this is a false argument. Labor, jobs, do not and cannot move to new industries very well. The new industries that may be created do not employ as many people as the jobs lost. Think of how easy it would be for a 55 or 60 year old manufacturing employee who has been out of work for several years to be retrained as an Internet Administrator or an Software Engineer. Notwithstanding the fact that this industry does not employ nearly as many people as steel or automobile manufacturing.

This problem can start to be fixed by the United States starting to employ tariff and non tariff barriers to protecting existing industries from foreign competition and to help to create new industries. This is allowable under World Trade Organization rules. Our foreign, particularly Chinese, competitors use and abuse these rules.

Contrary to what the religion of Free Trade preaches, this would not start a trade war. The Chinese are very worried that they may destroy too much of our manufacturing capability and our ability to absorb their manufactured products before they can bring their nation up to living standards comparable to the United States.

The Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1931 that the Free Traders use as a example of how a tariff will started a trade war and exacerbated the depression of the 1930s is false!! A 1931 State Department report stated that our trading partners did not view this tariff as anything other than business as usual.

We have an obligation to help ALL of the citizens of the United States to have a job that provides for a decent way of life. We have to stand up to the Multinational Corporations who only care about lining their executive's pockets and get rid of the religion of Free Trade.
6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

André L. C.
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in Brazil on October 15, 2022
Verified Purchase
A great book on a matter that must people are interested butt don't understand.
Is free trade really necessary and inevitable?
What's the consequences?
The government has been right about or there are other options?
Recommended.
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RC
5.0 out of 5 stars Changed my Mind
Reviewed in Canada on December 27, 2018
Verified Purchase
I was previously a free-trader, but this book changed my mind. Ian Fletcher carefully takes you through many arguments to demonstrate why free trade fails to be a coherent and viable economic policy. He then discusses how an economy can capture key advanced industries to secure high-wage jobs that will provide continued growth in important emerging industries.

I would recommend this book.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Changed my Mind
Reviewed in Australia on May 29, 2021
Verified Purchase
I was previously a free-trader, but this book changed my mind. Ian Fletcher carefully takes you through many arguments to demonstrate why free trade fails to be a coherent and viable economic policy. He then discusses how an economy can capture key advanced industries to secure high-wage jobs that will provide continued growth in important emerging industries.

I would recommend this book.
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Rob Julian
5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book and Understand Exactly What Rich Country Economics and Politics Will be Centred On in the Coming Decades
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2012
Verified Purchase
Admittedly, for me this book was totally a case of preaching to the converted (see my profile) but anyhow it has all the hallmarks of a great economics book: a) a clear thesis and structure, b) thorough discussion of opposing arguments, c) comprehensive use of relevant sources, d) good writing style striking a balance between technical sophistication and readability.

Anti free market themes have grown in support for obvious reasons during the last few years, and Ian Fletcher has based the foundations for the first parts of his book on the work of excellent economists such as Eric S. Reinert:  How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor  and Clyde Prestowitz:  Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East . Indeed an important point to note is that sources and praise found in this book have a bias towards people (like the above) with practical experience of international trade matters, such as trade commissioners and businessmen. This further highlights the contrasting ivory tower nature of many free trade economists. "If engineers and physicists did not see eye to eye, might we not start questioning physics?" p10.

After a comprehensive treatment of the arguments and history surrounding free trade and comparative advantage, focusing mainly on the US but relevant to other Western countries also, this book then effectively has gone that step further by launching a comprehensive bold call for a flat rate tariff ("Natural Strategic Tariff") on US imports. The clear aim of his tariff would be to recover a proportion of American manufacturing jobs and reduce the massive US trade imbalance issue at the centre of international economics. (Interestingly and admirably Fletcher does not demonise China, but observes that it is the low American savings rate that contributes to the Chinese holding of American debt and hence the low dollar price of the Chinese currency p75).

Given that protectionism, as a word and as an idea, has been so comprehensively denigrated in Western society and in America especially, Fletcher understandably spends a large proportion of the book underlining the convincing case and picking easy holes in establishment free trade mythology. One could imagine a Japanese or Chinese state official being puzzled at the length the author goes to in order to drive home his points, as they would take much of what he writes as obvious and part of their Econ101 Asian growth strategy. But for a US / Western audience, Fletcher has decades of ideological indoctrination to overcome, therefore a robust and thorough defence of his case is warranted.

However, one worry for me is that in reading from a non-American perspective, parts of this book could come across as perhaps a manifesto for disproportionate American domination of the desirable sectors of international manufacturing: "Instead, the ideal trading partner is one that perfectly complements a nation's own more sophisticated economy. The ideal trading partner is less like a slave (the colonial exploitation model) than like the perfect employee. He skilfully performs all the tasks his employer doesn't want to perform, freeing that employer to perform more-valuable tasks. But he isn't so skilled that he threatens his employer's entrenched position doing the tasks he wishes to reserve to himself." p 224. "We need not have ethical qualms about taking industries away from Japan. This is true even of the advanced sectors of nations that are still poor overall, such as India and China, as it is not the Third World peasant sectors of these nations that meaningfully compete with us; it is the developed sectors of these nations, which are like islands of First World industry in the Third World. The yuppies of Bangalore are the legitimate objects of our rivalry." p 238.

This shows an area where perhaps his and my perspectives diverge, being the questions about what is fair regarding the division of labour within the world trade system as a whole. Also the perpetual growth and environmental considerations are represented less than I would have liked in this book. I am 100% behind the concept of tariffs improving the economic situation of the working man or woman in the US, but to place too much emphasis on capturing or recapturing the most favourable areas of manufacturing worldwide, has a whiff of neocolonialism about it. Fletcher correctly identifies that the targets for their competitive assaults are the rich of other countries and not the poor, but given the arguments he summarizes so well about countries developing by changing what they produce, it seems contradictory to wish America to recapture the lions share of the high protein manufacturing meat. Although the poor of the world are not currently competing in the markets in which the author wants his tariff to have the greatest impact, perhaps it is contentious if a tariff policy may "lock out" their opportunities in the future. I suppose it all comes down to fair shares. Americans have a right to make what they buy, but do they have a right to make and export significantly more than their fair share of the best bits of worldwide manufacturing indefinitely?

He correctly notes the decline of Britain as a world economic power, but perhaps it is necessary to accept that America also has left behind a period where it was historically unusually dominant, and a future America may, and perhaps should, never be so lucky in what export markets it dominates. This could imply merely that tariffs should not be a tool used to foster disproportionate dominance in manufactured exports, which need not be the case of course. America is, as he notes, a large rich country, which could easily support many protected competitive industries currently satisfied by imports, without the need for excessive export dominance. The key question is therefore: are tariffs to be aimed at helping Americans make more of what they buy and improving the prospects of their blue collar workers, or are tariffs part of a more internationally focused ambitious industrial policy, aimed at re-capturing economic dominance and disproportionately cornering the cream of high-tec manufacturing? One route has merely reduced inequality and social harmony outcomes, the later is more nationalistic and contentious. I think this book does not explicitly promote the later more nationalistic ethos, but it does not caution against it enough either for my liking.

His book and I hope my comments reveal the certain type of conflict inherent in international trade issues which present themselves as soon as you depart from the deludingly harmonious ivory tower fallacy of free trade. The subtle distinction made above between the two different ethoses of tariffs dictate how internationally contentious such a stance may become. Add in issues of population growth, climate change, technology and perpetual growth models of economics, and it is easy to see stormy times ahead in international trade relations.

One final important point that Fletcher makes is that he justifies his flat rate tariff proposal as being preferable to a pick and choose policy, because he wisely notes that it minimises the political interference and interest lobbying possible in a political system such as America's: "Billionaire investor Warren Buffet says that one of his criteria for investing in a company is that it must have a business that even a fool can run--because sooner or later a fool will. A similar philosophy should guide our construction of a tariff policy. We need a broad--based policy that can survive imperfect implementation and political meddling, a certain amount of which will be inevitable. We do not need an intricate, brittle, difficult policy that will only create work for bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists." p232. . . .Good point.

Please buy this book as it deals with THE ISSUE of the future. * PROTECTIONISM *
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shelly13
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on October 4, 2016
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Great book, every American should read.
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