"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.

Economic cycles are driven by financial flows, namely quantities of savings and credits, and not by high street inflation or interest rates. Their sweeping destructive powers are expressed through Global Liquidity, a $130 trillion pool of footloose cash. Global Liquidity describes the gross flows of credit and international capital feeding through the world’s banking systems and wholesale money markets. The huge jump in the volume of international financial markets since the mid-1980s has been boosted by deregulation, innovation and easy money, with financial globalisation now surpassing the peaks of integration reached before the First World War. Global Liquidity drives these markets: it is often determinant, frequently disruptive and always fast-moving. Barely one fifth of Wall Street’s huge gains over recent decades have come from earnings: rising liquidity and investors’ appetite for riskier financial assets have propelled stock prices higher. Similar experiences are shared worldwide and even in emerging markets, such as India, flat earnings have not deterred waves of foreign money and domestic mutual funds from driving-up stock prices. Now with central banks actively pursuing quantitative easing policies, industrial corporations flush with cash and rising wealth levels among emerging market investors, the liquidity theory of investment has never been more important. International spill-overs of these rapacious cross-border flows sets off capital wars and exposes the unattractive face of liquidity called ‘risk.’ As the world grows bigger, it becomes ever more volatile. From the early 1960s onwards, the world economy and its financial markets have suffered from three broad types of shocks – labour costs, oil and commodities, and global liquidity. Financial markets spin on fragile axes and the absence of liquidity often provides a warning of upcoming troubles. Global Liquidity is a much-discussed, but narrowly-researched and vaguely-defined topic. This book deeply explores the subject by clearly defining and measuring liquidity worldwide and by showing its importance for investors. The roles of central banks, shadow banking, the rise of Repo and growth of wholesale money are discussed. Additionally, covering the latest developments in China’s increasingly dominant financial economy, this book will appeal to practitioners, policy-makers, economists and academics, as well as those with a general interest in how financial markets work.

The days of rapid economic growth in China are over. Mounting debt and rising internal distortions mean that rebalancing is inevitable. Beijing has no choice but to take significant steps to restructure its economy. The only question is how to proceed. Michael Pettis debunks the lingering bullish expectations for China's economic rise and details Beijing's options. The urgent task of shifting toward greater domestic consumption will come with political costs, but Beijing must increase household income and reduce its reliance on investment to avoid a fall.

Unique in its breadth and scope, this volume provides a comprehensive history of U.S. trade and monetary policy from colonial times to the present. Gill examines the origins of the traditional protectionist policies that prevailed from the beginning of the Republic until 1913 and explores in detail America's experience with trade in the years from the end of World War I to the present day. Case histories of the experience of several U.S. industries in attempting to get the government to implement trade laws are drawn from the author's extensive involvement as a trade consultant. Gill asserts that U.S. economic might was built upon sound money and the overt protection of its industrial and economic base and that when protectionist policies have been abandoned--as in the Wilson and Reagan years--our economic position in the world has suffered. He calls for an end to the free trade zeitgeist of the 1980s, arguing instead for a renewed commitment to rational protection. Trade Wars Against America is chronological in approach. It begins by examining the protectionist policies of the early Republic; the War of 1812 as the first trade war after the Republic's founding; Andrew Jackson's struggle with the banking community over the conduct of trade and monetary policy; and the rise of protectionism after the Civil War and its culmination in the McKinley presidency, an era of unparalleled prosperity. Gill goes on to discuss the assault on the protectionist system by Woodrow Wilson and Edward House; the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank; the Trade Act of 1934 and its role in the Depression; and the supranational movement that culmiated at Bretton Woods and resulted in the creation of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the GATT--the Geneva-based organization implementing the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade. Finally, Gill looks at the period since World War II, concluding that trade wars are being waged against the United States primarily with the subsidies foreign governments give their industries to increase exports. Privately owned U.S. firms, Gill asserts, cannot effectively compete against government-owned or subsidized industries abroad.

In recent years, the opposition to trade liberalization and globalization of capital markets has increased. It also led to the popularity of the 'Trump narrative',1 coined by Lamp regarding the winners and losers in economic globalization. According to this narrative, workers are engaged in a zero-sum competition over jobs: the workers in trade surplus countries such as China 'steal' the jobs of the workers in the US, a deficit country. Hence, the new book Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace, authored by Matthew C. Klein, the economics commentator at Barron's, and Michael Pettis, Professor of finance at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, is a timely must-read for anyone who is interested in discovering some real causes of trade wars, and seeking an answer to the question: 'who are the winners and losers of economic globalization'

An Evening Standard's Book of the Year 'A tour de force.' David Goodhart All over the West, party systems have shattered and governments have been thrown into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking analysis, Michael Lind, one of America's leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry and reveals the real battle lines. He traces how the breakdown of class compromises has left large populations in Western democracies politically adrift. We live in a globalized world that benefits elites in high income 'hubs' while suppressing the economic and social interests of those in more traditional lower-wage 'heartlands'. A bold framework for understanding the world, The New Class War argues that only a fresh class settlement can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists - and save democracy.

What can organizations do to create changes that are both profound and enduring? This anthology explores why traditional change strategies have failed and examines constructive alternatives. International experts prove successful change can be a realistic goal. Real examples of pilot projects, model schools, and other groundbreaking endeavors illustrate precisely how theory translates into practice.