The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future—and What It Will Take to Win It Back

Why, in 1993, did the newly elected Bill Clinton pass the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pro-business measure invented by his political adversaries and opposed by his allies in labor and the environment? The answer, according to Faux, is that Clinton was less devoted to his base than to his fellow elites, rewarding their donations to the Democratic Party with access to Mexico's cheap labor and lax environmental standards. With a fluid grasp of both history and economics, Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, critiques both Democrats and Republicans for protecting transnational corporations "while abandoning the rest of us to an unregulated, and therefore brutal and merciless, global market." Faux describes how free trade and globalization have encouraged businesses to become nationless enterprises detached from the economic well-being of any single country, to the detriment of all but transnational elites. He details the genesis of NAFTA and the failure of the agreement to deliver on its promises to workers, predicting a severe American recession as its legacy. But Faux sees hope for North America in the model of the European Union, a pie-in-the-sky conclusion to this incisive, rancorous book. (Jan.)