My Home About Me

Reader E. M. Schultze points to this article attacking trade by William Grieder in The Nation. I'll be writing much more about this. But just to start, I want to comment on the rhetorical style and logical framework being applied here. From the opening paragraphs:

Ralph Gomory...is a gentle-spoken technologist, trained as a mathematician and largely apolitical. He does not set out to overthrow the establishment but to correct its deeper fallacies... Now president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, he knew something was missing in the "pure trade theory" taught by economists. If free trade is a win-win proposition, Gomory asked himself, then why did America keep losing?

Within the first few paragraphs, this story marks itself as intended for those who are largely political -- those who already believe that there is something wrong with trade. Note the premise set out as the platform for all the argument to come: "then why did America keep losing?" Just how has America "lost"? What proof is there that with American industrial production, employment, home ownership, household net worth and the stock market at all-time highs we have "lost" in any sense whatsoever? What requires explanation? What requires reform?

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