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How to Win a Trade War
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 27, 2026
I was lucky enough to attend the London book event, Soumaya Keynes in conversation with Ed Conway on How To Win A Trade War: A Friendly Guide To An Unfriendly World. This is an exciting and very timely book, and both authors are wonderful.
The lead author is Soumaya Keynes, the award-winning British economics journalist, author, and podcaster. The second is Chad P. Bown, an American economist who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of State during the Biden administration. He is currently a Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Washington think tank that has been a central architect of the trade-liberalization era and that holds, by its own description, that deeper global economic integration benefits everyone.
So this is trade economics written from trade journalism and from inside the world-is-flat, Friedman-style globalization commentariat, rather than from the critical and scholarly political economy traditions. I would shelve it accordingly. I'd shelve it next to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. Fun to read economics books tailored by and according to the optics, politics, diplomatics, bureaucratics of neoliberal market economics.
Je m'excuse if this comes off as arrogant, because I do not mean it as a criticism. One writes from one's training and perspective, and the depth and range vary accordingly.
That is to say, the book does not engage the political economy of value creation versus value extraction, planetary boundaries, regenerative and distributive design, throughput, the circular economy, unequal exchange, ecological debt, drain as net appropriation, the imperial mode of living, plunder, crisis profiteering, or shock-driven accumulation. That is fine. As a writer I know that one book cannot do everything. It is only to mark where the depth of this one reaches, and where it stops.
The register is "let us all be friends and persuade multinational corporations to stop evading tax," without one mention of extractive logics, which is beyond me. It rubs me the wrong way to tiptoe around the subject while the elephant sits in the room. But that is what you get from a book on the economy written from inside the economics mainstream.
Here is a great interview where Jon Stewart tries to go there, which is why it carries those frequent awkward silences and sighs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYcwb...
He asks where multinational corporations actually sit in all of this, given that they hold no allegiance to any nation. He presses on why government subsidizes corporations and then lets them leave with the profits, when everyone in the room knows they are on the payroll.
The lead author is Soumaya Keynes, the award-winning British economics journalist, author, and podcaster. The second is Chad P. Bown, an American economist who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of State during the Biden administration. He is currently a Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Washington think tank that has been a central architect of the trade-liberalization era and that holds, by its own description, that deeper global economic integration benefits everyone.
So this is trade economics written from trade journalism and from inside the world-is-flat, Friedman-style globalization commentariat, rather than from the critical and scholarly political economy traditions. I would shelve it accordingly. I'd shelve it next to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. Fun to read economics books tailored by and according to the optics, politics, diplomatics, bureaucratics of neoliberal market economics.
Je m'excuse if this comes off as arrogant, because I do not mean it as a criticism. One writes from one's training and perspective, and the depth and range vary accordingly.
That is to say, the book does not engage the political economy of value creation versus value extraction, planetary boundaries, regenerative and distributive design, throughput, the circular economy, unequal exchange, ecological debt, drain as net appropriation, the imperial mode of living, plunder, crisis profiteering, or shock-driven accumulation. That is fine. As a writer I know that one book cannot do everything. It is only to mark where the depth of this one reaches, and where it stops.
The register is "let us all be friends and persuade multinational corporations to stop evading tax," without one mention of extractive logics, which is beyond me. It rubs me the wrong way to tiptoe around the subject while the elephant sits in the room. But that is what you get from a book on the economy written from inside the economics mainstream.
Here is a great interview where Jon Stewart tries to go there, which is why it carries those frequent awkward silences and sighs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYcwb...
He asks where multinational corporations actually sit in all of this, given that they hold no allegiance to any nation. He presses on why government subsidizes corporations and then lets them leave with the profits, when everyone in the room knows they are on the payroll.
June 23, 2026
Educational, informative and entertaining. I'm a professional trade analyst, and I'm embarrassed to admit how much I learned (a lot).
I didn't agree with everything, and the gags didn't always hit the mark, but they were very balanced, and no comedian has a perfect hit rate. Also the lack of numbered notes in the text I found frustrating. I didn't actually clock that there were references until well into the book.
I'll be lending it round at work (sorry authors, of course I mean encouraging people to buy it), and doubtless referring back to it many times. Big thanks to the authors for their work.
I didn't agree with everything, and the gags didn't always hit the mark, but they were very balanced, and no comedian has a perfect hit rate. Also the lack of numbered notes in the text I found frustrating. I didn't actually clock that there were references until well into the book.
I'll be lending it round at work (sorry authors, of course I mean encouraging people to buy it), and doubtless referring back to it many times. Big thanks to the authors for their work.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews