Privatized Planet: ‘Free Trade’ as a Weapon Against Democracy, Healthcare and the Environment

by T.J. Coles

President Trump has torn up the TTIP and TPP. Britain is distancing itself from the European Union. Does this means that corporate globalization is in retreat? Privatized Planet exposes the truth about 'free trade' in this new era of globalization. Quoting leaked documents, corporate lobby memos and a host of other primary sources, it seeks to prove that corporate globalization is simply changing shape, not coming to an end. Author T.J. Coles takes us on a tour of US-led corporate free trade deals from WWII to the present. He argues that activists helped beat back the big multilateral trade deals, TTIP and TPP, and that they must now pay attention to the 'noodle bowl' of bilateral deals being signed in secret, like the ongoing US-UK free trade deal. Whether it's privatizing Britain’s National Health Service, lobbying to get genetically-modified foods and hormone-treated beef into Europe, pushing fracking on Eastern European countries, or murdering environmental activists in the third world, the US-led corporate empire will stop at nothing until the planet is in private hands.

Genres: Economics

168 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Anand Goyal · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book needs to be twice as long. Do not read it if you’re not already semi-knowledgable in global institutions and trade.

Often sections just seemed to be large technical quotes with little to no explanation. The section on PFIs in the NHS and privatisation were almost unintelligible, as someone reading from the UK.

There’s a lot of technical terms and phrases that carry little weight or meaning without proper explanation.

3 stars because there are sections that really did make me think how messed up the current global economy is. But I don’t think I would have understood them if this was my first book on global trade.

I would highly recommend reading the divide by Jason Hickle instead, and wait for a second edition of this book that fleshes out the arguments it’s trying to make.

[Niels · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's not that the author does not have a point in seeing trade agreements linked to privatization and deregulation trends, but the way he makes his point is subjective, selective, unstructured, and simply badly written. See it more as a long activist pamphlet, rather than as a historical account of the development of 'free trade'.