Among the contributors: Francois Rabelais, Eduardo Galeano, Rebecca West, Maria Edgeworth, Al-Dimashqi, Fernand Braudel, Francis Alys, Ayn Rand, David Ricardo, Joseph Conrad, Max Weber, Hilary Mantel, George Caleb Bingham, Jane Jacobs, Suzy Hansen, and Laleh Khalili.
Lewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
[Goodreads seems to have abbreviated the allowable word count for reviews, or my 'reviews' are longer now. The following is not complete. My apologies.]
L.Q. often seems prescient in its content. This issue was published two months ago and likely was many months in preparations. This week (05/13/2019///13/05/19) Der Supreme Leader here in the Ooo.Ess.Ah. is roiling China and the global markets with TARIFFS!
The whole Supreme mess has even prompted me to dig out my copies of Free To Choose by Milton Friedman and Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, for additional enlightenment.
The 3 sections this month are: Negotiations and Deals [Arrgh!] Routes and Outposts Markets and Rackets
The very first extract in N & D is bits of testimony “from public hearings held by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Section 301 tariffs” in 2018. It is noteworthy in the underlying favoritism either sought or complained about.
Wikipedia, as usual, is a bit easier to understand:
“Tariffs are meant to reduce pressure from foreign competition and thus reduce the trade deficit. They have historically been used to protect infant industries and to allow import substitution industrialization. Tariffs may also be used to rectify artificially low prices for certain imported goods, due to ‘dumping’, export subsidies or currency manipulation.
On the other hand, tariffs lead to misallocation of resources, as inputs in both the home country and the foreign country are used in a way that may lead to lower output, and therefore lower income, for the residents of both countries. And, since tariffs drive up the prices paid by domestic consumers on the targeted items, consumers’ purchasing power is diminished. For these reasons, most economists oppose most tariffs.”
Chapter Two of Free To Choose, The Tyranny of Controls, is informative also. Your library may have a copy.
As I understand it (or likely not), less or no tariffs all around would be better. If we have to temporarily increase them in order to get leverage for reductions, that is unfortunate. In the meantime we consumers will pay higher prices.
Today’s New York Times (05/16/2019): The Global Economy Was Improving. Then the Fighting Resumed.
By Peter S. Goodman
May 15, 2019
The Port of Tacoma, in Tacoma, Wash. The biggest threat to global fortunes has become the intensifying conflict between the two largest economies on earth, the United States and China.Ted S. Warren/Associated Press The Port of Tacoma, in Tacoma, Wash. The biggest threat to global fortunes has become the intensifying conflict between the two largest economies on earth, the United States and China.Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
LONDON — In ordinary times, worries about the health of the global economy tend to prompt leaders of the largest countries to join forces in pursuit of safety.
These are not ordinary times.
The biggest threat to global fortunes has become the intensifying conflict between the two largest economies on earth, the United States and China. As their leaders openly contemplate how to inflict pain on each other, the rest of the world now frets about becoming collateral damage in an escalating trade war.
Only a week ago, China and the United States appeared to be moving toward cooling their hostilities, while global economic prospects were improving. Worries about a worldwide slowdown were giving way to burnished hopes for expansion.
Fears about the weakening of China’s economy were easing as President Trump advertised a soon-to-be-signed trade deal. That lifted the outlook for Asian economies dependent on global commerce like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Europe, a perpetual source of concern, was flashing signs of renewal. Defying skeptics, the American economy remained on a tear.
But late last week, as Mr. Trump sharply increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, the world found itself grappling with the likelihood that the trade war would be painful and expensive. The concern mounted on Monday as Beijing retaliated and the Trump administration detailed plans to slap 25 percent tariffs on virtually all goods that China sends to the United States.
For businesses and consumers alike, it all raised the prospect that they would soon be paying higher prices for goods, a reality that discourages commerce.
“An escalation scenario would be terrible all around,” said Gabriel Sterne, head of global macro research at Oxford Economics in London. “A negative impact on trade flow is going to be bad for global growth for several years. It’s bad news for almost everybody.”
If both sides follow through on their threatened tariffs, China’s annual economic output will be reduced by 0.8 percent while the United States will see its annual growth reduced by 0.3 percent, according to Oxford Economics.
Those numbers are small in the grand scheme of things, but the damage could be felt acutely within industries that are especially exposed to the trade war, such as American agriculture and Chinese electronics manufacturers. The weakness was underscored on Wednesday by the latest indications that China’s economy is slowing and by lower-than-expected figures for retail sales and factory orders in the United States.
The harm could be especially severe for countries that are most dependent on trade, including Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico and Japan.
At the center of trouble sits China, the world’s most populous country. Its breakneck development over recent decades has added hundreds of millions of consumers to the global marketplace while supplying a vast assemblage of low-cost goods.
Given that China is the source of roughly one-third of the world’s economic growth, any disruption to its trade amounts to a global event.
Mr. Trump has designed his tariffs to wound China as he seeks to pressure its leaders to agree to cease subsidizing state-owned companies, stop demanding intellectual property from American businesses and open its markets to foreign competitors. Until last week, the president was insisting that a trade deal with China was imminent. Then, he abruptly accused China of reneging on its commitments and opted to increase tariffs.
The sharp escalation comes at an especially fraught time for the world economy, jeopardizing what had seemed to be a stabilizing, if gradually slowing, Chinese economy.
Volumes of freight imported by China surged in
L.Q. is always a smorgasbord of mental prodding. Hodgepodge, gallimaufry, melange, and miscellanea are equally synonymic. A cohesive, unified, whole? I’m not always sure, but it’s a good thing that it makes one want to inquire further.
There is a lot of insightful reading here. And as always, a lot of it is free, online.
The Table of Contents of L.Q. Trade, with some access links, can be found online via https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roun.... It is also reproduced herein at the very end. Head straight for the full essays at the end for complete, but short, works, such as:
Timeless Life in the Grand Bazaar: The rise and fall of Turkey’s grand marketplace, by Suzy Hansen, tells us: “The beautiful economy of the Grand Bazaar, which had disavowed rank competition and believed in the importance of the collective, was finally being destroyed.”
“The story of the Grand Bazaar was not that the tourists stopped coming; it was rather that Turkey was losing one of its greatest organic and historic inventions: the spirit of the guild system, the protection of the worker and the artist. “The whole city is being eaten up by tourism development and is turned into a lifeless place with no culture of its own. Little by little, it becomes like Las Vegas,” the historian Uğur Tanyeli told the Guardian. “What people will be able to see is not Istanbul but an illusion of Istanbul. It is now possible to visit Istanbul without ever having seen it.”” (L.Q. p. 196) Viva Las Vegas.
Per Encyclopedia Farlex: “‘The Grand Bazaar (Turkish: Kapalıçarşı,meaning ‘Covered Market’; also Büyük Çarşı, meaning ‘Grand Market’[1]) in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops [2][3] which attract between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.[4] In 2014, it was listed No.1 among world’s most-visited tourist attractions with 91,250,000 annual visitors.[5] The Grand Bazar at Istanbul is often regarded as one of the first shopping malls of the world.”
I’m surprised there is not at least a facsimile at Disney World or Epcot Center. It would save going to Turkey. I’ve loved a lifetime of travel and seeing the similarities and differences of my fellow man, and woman. It seems tourism is becoming a frenetic stampede. Be careful out there.
I love the title of the second full essay:
Maken Engelond Gret Ayeyn: How the contest between free trade and protectionism sparked fervor and unrest in medieval England, By Paul Strohm. In this era/error of MAGA, Make America Great Again, who cannot risk a wry smirk at the ‘playe o’er wordes’ and hope the thought police aren’t monitoring.
This one is about protectionism, or its attempt, of the English wool trade in 14th century London. To say that it was bloody difficult for Lombards, Flemings, and I-talians living there is an understated double entendre. Murder most foul.
“Participants in the discussion included Geoffrey Chaucer (who spent fourteen years as controller of the wool custom in the Port of London and whose father was a successful international wine trader) and the gentleman lawyer John Gower, his friend and poetic rival. Joining them were other canny observers of this emergent scene: city chroniclers, geographers, even a budding political economist who composed one of the earliest tracts written in English on the subject of commerce, essentially an “England First” manifesto in Chaucerian verse.” (p. 199)
History, we are doomed to repeat it.
Speaking of tariffs, as we were, in an extract cleverly subtitled by L.Q. as ‘Art of the New Deal‘, FDR states in 1934:
“Equally clear is the fact that a full and permanent domestic recovery depends in part upon a revived and strengthened international trade and that American exports cannot be permanently increased without a corresponding increase in imports.” (p. 38) Hmm.
Adam Smith, on mutual benefit and the division of labor:
“In almost every other race of animals, each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind proposes to do this: give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.”
What are some of my favorite extracts in Voices In Time, perhaps also available free?
There are several on slavery. Most notable is c. 1800: Bermuda | Mary Prince. Man’s inhumanity to Man, and Woman, as if we could forget, or remember. Mary Prince is sold:
“My heart throbbed with grief and terror so violently that I pressed my hands quite tightly across my breast, but I could not keep it still, and it continued to leap as though it would burst out of my body. But who cared for that? Did one of the many bystanders, who were looking at us so carelessly, think of the pain that wrung the hearts of the Negro woman and her young ones? No, no! They were not all bad, I daresay, but slavery hardens white people’s hearts toward the blacks; and many of them were not slow to make their remarks upon us aloud, without regard to our grief—though their light words fell like cayenne on the fresh wounds of our hearts. Oh, those white people have small hearts who can only feel for themselves.” (p. 167)
Closely following is 1788: Plymouth | William Elford, from a pamphlet detailing horrors of the slave trade:
“If we regard the first stage of it on the continent of Africa, we find that a hundred thousand slaves are annually produced there for exportation, the greatest part of whom consist of innocent persons, torn from their dearest friends and connections, sometimes by force and sometimes by treachery. Of these, experience has shown that five and forty thousand perish, either in the dreadful mode of conveyance before described or within two years after their arrival at the plantations, before they are seasoned to the climate. Those who unhappily survive these hardships are destined, like their beasts of burden, to exhaust their lives in the unremitting labors of a slavery without recompense and without hope.” (p. 109)
Another is a fictional account, written by a woman and published in 1811, 1804: Jamaica | Maria Edgeworth. All are available free online.
You women, and there are more than a few of you blogging out there, (and why not you men?) might find thoughtful 1898: Boston | Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from her Women and Economics. “Although not producers of wealth, women serve in the final process of preparation and distribution. Their labor in the household has a genuine economic value.” (p. 51)
There is Hamilton on tariffs. (Can’t get away from it.) 1791: Philadelphia | Alexander Hamilton.
“It is well known that certain nations grant bounties on the exportation of particular commodities, to enable their own workmen to undersell and supplant all competitors in the countries to which those commodities are sent. Hence the undertakers of a new manufacture have to contend not only with the natural disadvantages of a new undertaking but with the gratuities and remunerations which other governments bestow. To be enabled to contend with success, it is evident that the interference and aid of their own government are indispensible.” (p. 59-60) Et tu, Alex.
Second only to Shakespeare in oft’ quoted, I sometimes think, is Mark Twain. His side-quote this issue: “Beautiful credit! The foundations of modern society.” –Mark Twain, 1873 (p. 62)
Many fine extracts remain, from authors familiar and not. Economist David Ricardo is here: 1817: Gloucestershire | David Ricardo. He is briefly, well-summarized here: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/b.... This link includes a concise, laymen’s explanation of comparative advantage, what I would call ‘why we trade’.
Pliny the Elder, Nikolai Gogol, Robert F. Kennedy, and Aristotle have free online extracts. See these and many others via the reproduced Table of Contents below.
One of the better ones. It's a rich vein (that always makes a difference). It's pre-pandemic, which is nearly nostalgia now, innit?
Trade can be seen in a macro- or micro- lens, and that made for good stories. Whether putting value on dead souls, or showing how Bolivian "bowler hats" cholitas became women's fashion due to one ill-fated (or well-fated) railway shipment, there were many great tales to tell.