The United States is entering a period of profound uncertainty in the world political economy-an uncertainty which is threatening the liberal economic order that its own statesmen created at the end of the Second World War. The storm surrounding this threat has been ignited by an issue that has divided Americans since the nation's founding: international trade. Is America better off under a free-trade regime, or has protectionism been more beneficial? The issue divided Alexander Hamilton from Thomas Jefferson, the slaveholding south from the industrializing north, and populists and industrialists in the Gilded Age. In our own times, it has pitted anti-globalization activists and manufacturing workers against both multinational firms and the bulk of the economics profession. Former U.S. Trade Representative C. Donald Johnson's The Wealth of a Nation is an authoritative history of the politics of trade in America from the Founding to the Trump era. He begins by charting the rise and fall of the U.S. protectionist system from the time of Alexander Hamilton to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Challenges to protectionist dominance were frequent and often serious, but the protectionist regime only faded in the wake of the Great Depression. After World War Two, America was the primary architect of the liberal free-trade economic order that ended up dominating the globe for over half a century. Recent years, however, have seen a swelling anti-free trade movement that casts the postwar liberal regime as anti-worker, pro-capital, and-in Donald Trump's view-even anti-American. In the course of this riveting history, Johnson emphasizes the benefits that have flowed from the postwar free trade regime, but focuses in particular on how it has helped American workers. Augmenting the system with new policies that address the negative effects of free trade is far more likely to help them than jettisoning it for a protectionist regime. As he stresses, free trade should not be the issue because it helps create wealth. Rather the central political issue remains as it always has been: how will business and labor share the wealth of the nation.

About the Author
C. Donald Johnson is the Director Emeritus of the Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy at the University of Georgia. Previously, Ambassador Johnson was a partner at the law firm of Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in the law related to international trade and investment, national security and foreign policy issues.

Reviews
Johnson, who worked as a trade official in president Bill Clinton's administration and then as a lawyer, set out to chronicle the central role trade politics have always played in the United States. He largely succeeds . . . with the Trump administration starting trade wars and bringing protectionism back, the book couldn't be timelier * Foreign Policy *
Densely detailed study of trade agreements across the span of American history, written by a former U.S. trade representative...[F]or students of international trade, macroeconomics, and governance-another theme is the struggle among various branches of government to regulates foreign trade-this will be a useful reference....Timely. * Kirkus *
Johnson offers numerous biographical sketches and a readable historical narrative with an increasing focus on movements, legal battles, and political pressure groups as he moves toward the present. Readers looking for current topics will take interest in his detailed discussion of labor issues as a central concern of trade politics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and the attempts by pro-trade politicians to satisfy the interests of an anti-trade labor movement. * J. Gerber, emeritus, San Diego State University, CHOICE *


Awards
Winner of Received the Certificate of Merit for High Technical Craftsmanship and Utility to Lawyers and Scholars (Honorable Mention) from the American Society of International Law.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190865917
Author C. Donald Johnson
Format Hardback
Page Count 664
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1032g
Dimensions(mm) 243mm * 164mm * 49mm