Edouard Prisse's favorite books to understand US-China trade

Mr. Lighthizer was, over the last decade, the only American author who warned of the damage that free trade with China was going to do and is now doing to our society.

I have great admiration for this man because, as a trade adviser during President Trump’s first presidency, he was courageous with his insight against all others who had different opinions.

This book and his articles showed me I am not alone in what I write, and this man encouraged me to continue.

Mr. Brzezinski was one of the very few who correctly described the power structures between the US and the rest of the world.

In my eyes, he had more wisdom than Henry Kissinger, and his view was a relief and a pleasure to read. I always thought: “Here is a wise man talking.”

My view of the damage that is being done by free trade with China seamlessly fits into Mr. Brzezinski’s worldview. He was a man I greatly admired.

This economist, who wrote “The Folly of Free Trade” article in the 1986 Harvard Business Review, wrote that free trade is not always good and scoffed at the religious-like belief that it is.

He is the only American thinker who wrote that clearly. Unfortunately, his writing was long-winded, which probably turned away readers. Although general opinion ignored his view, he was totally right, and we now sit with the problem of that ignorance.

I feel he deserves a statue, and I fervently hope the White House will one day have one erected for him, because, for a nation, it is right to honor its great thinkers, even if they were ignored in their lifetime and are no longer alive. 

Culbertson was right.

This book, so excellent in giving valid arguments and then predicting China’s supposed inevitable economic demise, is a clear example of how most American authors reason about China without taking into account the huge economic differences it has with our economy.

McMahon and all the others forget that a) in the year 2000 there were 600 million cheap laborers in the countryside, and there still are more than 200 million available now, b) the Beijing Communist dictatorship is cruelly keeping wages of production workers at less than half ours, and c) the existing free trade, started by Bill Clinton in 2000, provides a huge yearly income to China that erases all possible financial troubles they may have.

These three elements together make Mr. McMahon’s book an intellectual silliness. Most authors in our Western world make the same error. It is high time this be realized and corrected.

This book is unique in that, in clear language, it explains Keynes’ Theory of Employment, which created the present science of macroeconomics.

It was printed in 1948 and the following years, in English and 37 other languages. It still is, in my view, THE book about macroeconomics that every economist should read and try to understand. Nothing else comes even near it in clarity and exposure of the excellent work by Keynes.