Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America

By way of full disclosure, the chances of my giving Pat Choate's new book, Dangerous Business a bad review are not very high. We have been friends and business associates for more years than either of us care to count and our views on the competence of those in our government who masquerade as international trade negotiators are strikingly similar. That said, Pat's ability to take a subject which is a non narcotic substitute for sleeping aidslike international tradeand make it interesting is rare and a gift which any college student who has a term paper due should appreciate. In his last book, Hot Property, Pat explained how people in countries like China steal ideas. This book concentrates on how they directly take our money. And it is important to note that Pat is not a China-phobe. In fact, the first thing he points out is that China, Inc. is not some backward, third world country. Its industries are now owned mostly by the government but controlled by very smart, very efficient and very experienced people who would hold similar jobs in private industry were they here in the United States. Worse, they are much better negotiators than anybody we have representing our country. Partially by intellect and partially by national trade doctrine. In fact, in many cases, with a little help from our own stupidity, they can fake us out of our jockstraps--usually made in China these days and sold at Wal-Mart. Pat points out that the situation we find ourselves in today is the result of the U.S. policy of free trade as opposed to fair trade which is being espoused by a non-partisan group of multi-national companies which look forward no further than their next quarter's earnings. The resulting disruption of our economy is simply not accounted for in negotiating today's trade agreements because the results of globalization are instant profits for the multi-nationals at the expense of jobs and the U.S. economy. Put bluntly to U.S. citizens who lose their jobs to outsourcing: you had a good run and if you live through the pain, maybe you'll do well in the future but you'll have to live through the pain as we pursue global profits. China, on the other hand, follows a global policy of mercantilism. Their currency is strong, they run a positive trade balance and they only let foreign investment into China when it suits their interests. And even when they do allow foreign investment, it is allowed with an eye towards the future so that perhaps they won't need it after they absorb all the knowledge and expertise they can. The results of both our policies and their policies have been a number of paradigm shifts in the United States. One example is that many parts we use in our defense industries are now sourced overseas. We are, even now, being treated, as an example, to the spectacle of an aircraft tanker competition between Boeing and the people who make the Airbus in Europe and Airbus won the initial round. The future safety of such arrangemen

Dangerous Business is an excellent resource for anyone with an interest in globalization, trade or economics. Mr. Choate succeeds where other notable academics have failed by presenting a readable, informative work that examines the often overlooked problems created by globalization. This is a great read.

A good book, though most business people will disagree, but most working people will cheer. Over the last 30 plus years things have gotten so bad that our biggest exports, are jobs. And our leaders say this is good for America. You think? We have trade deficits with just about every trading partner, if they can be so described. But no one in power thinks we need to do anything to change things. Trade, something of value, in exchange for something of equal value. What do we manufacturer in this nation anymore worth trading? This in turn has contributed to the credit crisis, over burdening credit card dept, (another story) our cities and states cannot meet their obligations in part because revenues are down. Then there is that nasty word "Globalization," where this nation has become the dumping ground for it seems any and all goods other nations produce. Where we now look the other way because goods are cheap, because they are produced by prisoners, or worse children. No enviromental precautions, no minimum wage, cheap labor, better defined as "SLAVE" labor. Then there is that nasty thing we do called deficit spending, where we spend more than we take in. Living on credit so to speak. The next President to take office had better have the balls to set this monster straight, or this economic quicksand America now faces will overshadow the great depression of the 1930s. We are pulling up every third world nation, at the expense of American jobs. The jobs an advisor of John McCain says we as Americans are not truly entitled to. Jobs that built this Nation after the depression, and aided in the winning of WW II. Suggestions are made by the author as to how we can begin to dig ourselves out of this mess, but it will take a great deal of heart. Heart enough to renegoiate our one way trade deals. Pay our way out of dept, and not try to borrow our way out. This is basic good economics, something like being left with a surplus, instead of dept. This is a major reason we can no longer properly supply our military, too much of what is now needed is produced by other Nations, and how bad is that? Well imangine if before World War 2 this were the case, think we would have won? The Pentagon has little choice but to look to overseas producers, because most of our heavy industry has been exported. This all relates to our educational system where most high school grad cannot read a simple rule. Not nearly enough revenues to properly educate our children, and a Communist Nation holds a great deal of our dept, as well as Middle Eastern Nations. I thought we were anti Communist. Where do we go from here? Well too many of us do not vote, and of those who do believe it when they the politicians say globalization is good for America. I hope we read this book, and start to pull our heads out of the sand.

Pat Choate, economist and former vice presidential running-mate of Ross Perot, masterfully exposes America's role in the global economy in his newest book, Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America. The ugly and deleterious side of globalization is documented through Choate's writing. Choate vividly details the nation's involvement in organizations such as NAFTA and the WTO and how involvement in these two organizations propelled the United States into globalism. The participation in NAFTA and the WTO has changed the economic policies both domestically and abroad. Corporations now find it profitable to move their manufacturing and service sectors to other nations that offer lower wages and sub-par environmental standards. The negative consequences of outsourcing are destroying America's ability to remain sovereign and secure by accruing an insurmountable trade deficit and the general shrinking of the middle class. Choate not only documents America's role in globalization with accuracy and precision, but he offers solutions to correct these errors and achieve a future of prosperity and independence. Dangerous Business will create awareness among the readers while offering an honest and insightful look into America's role in the global economy.

Americans of a certain age know that something is wrong. Their nation is not what it used to be. But what exactly is the matter? Pat Choate provides a thoroughly researched and authoritative answer: the recent fashion for radical globalism has driven American society off a cliff. Of course, other writers have already taken shots at globalism but few if any have come to the subject with a greater depth of experience or a more acute intellect than Choate. Add in the fact that Choate is a born writer with powers of explication that other policy analysts can only dream of and the result is a remarkable tour de force that is must reading for any American concerned about his or her nation's future. Again and again Choate, an economist and best selling author who was Ross Perot's vice presidential running mate in 1996, comes up with devastating facts that give the lie to the globalist chop logic that has driven American policy-making in recent years. As he points out, a fundamental issue is the extent to which Washington has come to be run by lobbyists -- and particularly lobbyists acting in various guises for foreign governments and industries. The activities of the K Street lobbying system have not only greatly speeded up the acceptance of globalism by America's largely economically illiterate elite but, in a pernicious self-feeding process, have been facilitated by such acceptance. His analysis ranges widely over such issues as the farcically counterproductive U.S. effort to create the World Trade Organization; America's vulnerability to illness spread via imports of contaminated food; the U.S. Defense Department's inability to keep track of its dependency on foreign suppliers for vital high-tech components; and perhaps most alarmingly the possibility that a foreign adversary could hide deadly Trojan Horse computer "viruses" in such components. Choate is undoubtedly right in naming the American media as a key factor in the historic debacle radical globalism has wrought. America's most prestigious newspapers in particular have been colonized by a self-perpetuating oligarchy of smart aleck editors whose understanding of economics does not go beyond chanting that "the market is always right" -- a mantra that any first-year economics student knows is more honored in the breach than in the observance. Hailed as geniuses by the Davos crowd, such editors affect a "let them eat cake" attitude towards the millions of Americans who have had their livelihoods destroyed by unfair trade. No wonder Ben H. Bagdikian, a prominent Berkeley journalism professor quoted by Choate, observes that, "trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele." That may be so but -- at least for a while longer -- books will continue to be published that hold nothing back. No book has done a better job of explaining the problems of radical globalism than Dangerous Business.