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Free trade is one of the most important, controversial issues of our time. 

So it's an issue worth truly understanding.

 

This book predicted its collapse 6 years before Trump, 10 years before Biden, and continues to give insights about the post-globalist world we are increasingly living in – and what may happen in Trump's second term.

 

  • Learn how the economic theories justifying free trade are riddled with flaws. (Economists actually knew this.)

  • Learn why impressively credentialled economists got it wrong. (Ordinary voters got it right.)

  • Learn how economic history shows many nations prospering under protectionism. (China, Japan, Korea, Germany...)

  • Learn how the Founding Fathers deliberately made America a protectionist country.  (Heard of Alexander Hamilton?)

  • Learn why free trade causes low wages. (It's more than just cheap foreign labor.)

  • Learn why cheap goods don't always compensate for lost jobs. (Which is what the globalists promised.)

  • Learn how free trade destroys our industrial base. (Which is costing us the industries of the future.)

  • Learn how China deliberately wages economic warfare against us. (Using our own stupidity.)

  • Learn how free trade increases our foreign debt. (International capital flows are the hidden cause.)

  • Learn how rival nations don't practice free trade. (The use a strategy called "mercantilism.")

  • Learn why no trade agreement can ever fix free trade. (So it's a waste of time to tinker with them.)

  • Learn why the WTO was doomed from the start. (And we should have known this.)

  • Learn how free trade helps America's military enemies, global terrorists, and foreign drug lords. (Open borders for contraband.)

  • Learn what America can do about all this. (Because tariffs are only the start.)

Critical Praise

Fletcher has written a powerful and refreshing critique of some cherished assumptions held by mainstream economists.  It is uniformly insightful, often brilliant, and remarkably readable.

Prof. George C. Lodge, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

About the Author

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Ian Fletcher is one of America's foremost experts on the problems of free trade. He was Senior Economist for the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) from 2010-2012 and is currently a senior advisory board member. CPA is a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. Prior to his tenure at CPA, Ian was a Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, an economist in private practice, and an IT consultant. Ian regularly participates in economic forums, discussions and debates. His next book, written with Marc Fasteau and entitled Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries, will be published by Cambridge University Press in January 2025. Educated at Columbia and Chicago, he lives in San Francisco and can be reached at ian.fletcher@industrialpolicy.us.

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