Focusing on the conflicts between the United States and Brazilian governments over Brazil's efforts to develop a local computer industry, High-Tech Trade Wars examines the political struggle between governments and multinational corporations in today's global economy.Sara Schoonmaker uses the technology industry to delve into one of the key political conflicts of our time: the construction of a free trade regime determined to open markets around the world to global capital, and attempts by Latin American, African, and other governments to resist this process. The Brazilian computer case is a prime example of a nationalist effort to promote local growth of a key high-technology industry—an effort that was eventually dismantled under the pressures of what Schoonmaker views as part of a broader process of neoliberal globalization.High-Tech Trade Wars presents a multidimensional view of the globalization process, where economic changes are shaped by political struggle and cultural discourse. It includes interviews with Brazilian industrialists and state officials involved with implementing and, eventually, dismantling Brazil's informatics policy, and discussions of grassroots-level protests organized against neoliberal globalization during the recent WTO meetings in Seattle and Davos, Switzerland.

Governments around the world? This volume answers these questions on the basis of detailed and rigorous case studies of trade disputes between the United States, Japan, and Europe in aircraft, semiconductors, supercomputers, telecommunications, and other electronics products. Tyson proposes a "cautious activist" policy agenda to promote US competitiveness in high-technology sectors and to strengthen multilateral rules governing high-technology trade.

"This is a very important book."--Martin Wolf, Financial TimesA provocative look at how today's trade conflicts are caused by governments promoting the interests of elites at the expense of workers Longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award "Worth reading for [the authors'] insights into the history of trade and finance."--George Melloan, Wall Street Journal Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past thirty years. Across the world, the rich have prospered while workers can no longer afford to buy what they produce, have lost their jobs, or have been forced into higher levels of debt. In this thought-provoking challenge to mainstream views, the authors provide a cohesive narrative that shows how the class wars of rising inequality are a threat to the global economy and international peace--and what we can do about it.

An accessible overview of political, economic, and strategic dimensions of global supply chains in a changing global political economy.

Outright trade war between the world’s two largest economies would be devastating to the working people of both countries, as well as destructive to the future of the entire world economy. The costs of conflict between China and the United States far outweigh the current causes of dispute in their economic relationship. These costs would be both direct, in terms of short-term losses of growth and employment, and indirect, in terms of long-term damage to the world trading system, diminishing investment and efficiency. There are points of genuine dispute between the United States and China over their economic interaction. Even if their economic significance is often exaggerated, these are legitimate points of contention and have to be addressed in a constructive manner. The analyses in this volume aim to contribute to a more reality-based consideration of both countries’ enlightened self-interests, which would yield progress on points of dispute in a manner consistent with keeping the world economy open for business.

The author of the bestseller The Zero Sum Society now tells us what we must do to remain a world-class economy at a time when other countries have outpaced us in growth, productivity and entrepreneurship.

"This impressive study focuses on Africa, which has suffered hideous crimes. Yash Tandon’s case is a powerful one, and can be extended: The global class war that is institutionalized in the misnamed 'free trade agreements' is also a war against the traditional victims of class war at home. The resistance, in Africa and elsewhere, which Tandon describes here, is a source of hope for the future." —Noam Chomsky "A necessary and timely contribution which goes to the roots of the deep crises we face as humanity." —Vandana Shiva "... understand that 'trade is war' as Yash Tandon beautifully explains in this important book." —Samir Amin Globalization has reduced many aspects of modern life to little more than commodities controlled by multinational corporations. Everything, from land and water to health and human rights, is today intimately linked to the issue of free trade. Conventional wisdom presents this development as benign, the sole path to progress. Yash Tandon, drawing on decades of on-the-ground experience as a high level negotiator in bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), here challenges this prevailing orthodoxy. He insists that, for the vast majority of people, and especially those in the poorer regions of the world, free trade not only hinders development – it visits relentless waves of violence and impoverishment on their lives. Trade Is War shows how the WTO and the Economic Partnership Agreements like the EU-Africa EPA and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are camouflaged in a rhetoric that hides their primary function as the servants of global business. Their actions are inflaming a crisis that extends beyond the realm of the economic, creating hot wars for markets and resources, fought between proxies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and now even in Europe. In these pages Tandon suggests an alternative vision to this devastation, one based on self-sustaining, non-violent communities engaging in trade based on the real value of goods and services and the introduction of alternative currencies.