Public debate over globalization and free trade often sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine, with opposing sides using the same words but meaning something entirely different by them. At other times, they speak different languages, with skeptics employing the imagery of barefoot children toiling in sweatshops run by multinationals, while advocates of globalization marshal tables of data that show life is really getting better for hundreds of millions of poor people in countries opening up to the global economy. And the rest of the time it is a dialogue of the deaf, with neither side even listening to the other.
A large share of the blame lies with the defenders of globalization, for failing to make an emotionally appealing case for the human liberty to engage in commerce across international borders. Economists are notorious for dealing in abstractions, when the audience hungers for flesh-and-blood stories about real people. Jagdish Bhagwati’s ambitious new book, In Defense of Globalization,fills many of those holes in the proglobalization argument. Bhagwati, a Columbia University economics professor and author of many books on trade, makes all the right economic arguments, but without the flurry of statistical correlations often used to make the case. Instead, he tells the story of how globalization has delivered a better standard of living in less developed countries, and how experiments with protectionist “import substitution” policies have systematically failed.
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