Myths of Free Trade

Why American Trade Policy Has Failed

A revised and updated edition of the provocative book from the man Studs Terkel called “one of the hippest members of congress”

“Brown’s fact-filled argument is a cogent critique of American trade policies in a punchy left-populist style that is rarely heard in Washington these days.” —Publishers Weekly

The subject of widespread attention when first released, including the pages of the New York Times Book Review, Myths of Free Trade provides a front-row seat to the Washington spectacle of corporate lobbying and political intimidation that keeps the free-trade mantra alive as American policy, despite all the evidence of its failure.

U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown—a leading progressive voice in Congress and a twelve-year veteran of Washington’s trade wars—takes apart free-trade dogma, myth by myth. His book is an accessible, personal, globe-trotting chronicle, taking the reader from the coffee fields of Nicaragua to the sweatshops of China; from the toxic wastelands on the Mexican border to the halls of Congress.

Described as an “essential primer” by The Progressive and a “voice of truth” by Public Citizen News, this edition includes a fascinating update that describes the congressional battle over the Central American Free Trade Agreement—a battle led by Tom DeLay on one side and Sherrod Brown on the other.

Praise

“Sherrod Brown demolishes the seven myths of NAFTA, and the ‘wonders’ of free-trade. . . . In Brown we have an eloquent public servant—rather than a go-along private one.”
—Studs Terkel
“Sherrod Brown reveals the power, corruption, and lies behind U.S. trade policy.”
—Eric Schlosser

Goodreads Reviews