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

America is in serious economic trouble — but don't expect our leaders to do anything about it. Thanks to globalization, America's rich and powerful now have more in common with the governing classes of other nations than they have with ordinary Americans. In Global Class War, economic commentator Jeff Faux explains the way both Democratic and Republican leaders have used so-called trade agreements to write a new global constitution that protects only one kind of citizen — the corporate investor. With the U.S. economy about to drown in a sea of rising red ink and American corporations relentlessly outsourcing our jobs and technology, a deep economic crisis is in the cards. Jeff Faux concludes this blistering expose with a convincing vision of a prosperous and democratic North America that could benefit every American, not just those at the top.

You will never think about 'free trade' the same way after reading Jeff Faux's superb book. As Faux makes clear, the globalization debate is really about whose interests are served by global elites, and how we need to go about reclaiming a democracy that serves ordinary people. This book should transform public discourse in America.

-Robert Kuttner, founding coeditor of the American Prospect and a contributing columnist to BusinessWeek

Jeff Faux's astonishing story of how class works will scandalize the best names in Wall Street and Washington-especially the much admired Robert Rubin, who along with other elites colluded behind the backs of ordinary citizens in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. The most cynical Americans will be shocked by the sordid details. This really is an important book.

-William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism and Secrets of the Temple

Globalization is a cover for American imperialism, but the beneficiaries are not the American people at the expense of foreigners but corporate executives at the expense of working-class and poor people wherever they may be. Jeff Faux offers a comprehensive and devastating analysis.

-Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire

In The Global Class War, Jeff Faux argues that the politics of the new world market is dominated by a virtual "Party of Davos," the globe-trotting network of corporate investors and CEOs, and the politicians and journalists who work on their behalf. Clinton and his treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, and Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, may use different strategies, but they promote the same globalization agenda in which the benefits go to America's corporate investors—and the costs are paid by ordinary Americans in outsourced jobs, military casualties, and an unsustainable foreign debt.

Faux shows how NAFTA, the WTO, and similar "free-trade" agreements are really deals among the global elite to rip up the social contract that allows the benefits of capitalism to be broadly shared. As the first secretary-general of the WTO admitted, they make up "the constitution of a single global economy." Its Bill of Rights protects just one citizen—the large transnational corporation.

Global corporations with American names are profitable, but the competitiveness of the people, businesses, and communities rooted in the U.S. economy is relentlessly deteriorating. America's workers, from the unskilled to highly educated design engineers and research scientists, have been set adrift in a sea of dog-eat-dog competition that guarantees a substantial drop in their living standards. The illusion of prosperity has been maintained by the biggest borrowing binge in history, but we are rushing toward a day of painful reckoning. Why aren't American business elites worried? Because their competitiveness is no longer tied to America's.

To escape this trap, Faux makes a powerful case for new cross-border politics to support the democratic redesign of globalization, beginning with the now integrated economies of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Both in the way this book defines globalization's core problem and in its vision of how to resolve it, The Global Class War will affect political debate in America and the world for years to come.

"You will never think about 'free trade' the same way after reading Jeff Faux's superb book. As Faux makes clear, the globalization debate is really about whose interests are served by global elites, and how we need to go about reclaiming a democracy that serves ordinary people. This book should transform public discourse in America."

—Robert Kuttner, founding coeditor of the American Prospect and a contributing columnist to BusinessWeek

"Jeff Faux's astonishing story of how class works will scandalize the best names in Wall Street and Washington—especially the much admired Robert Rubin, who along with other elites colluded behind the backs of ordinary citizens in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. The most cynical Americans will be shocked by the sordid details. This really is an important book."

—William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism and Secrets of the Temple

"Globalization is a cover for American imperialism, but the beneficiaries are not the American people at the expense of foreigners but corporate executives at the expense of working-class and poor people wherever they may be. Jeff Faux offers a comprehensive and devastating analysis."

—Chalmers Johnson, author of The Sorrows of Empire

Introduction.

1. NAFTA: Class Reunion.

2. “Good Jobs” and Other Global Deceptions.

3. The Governing Class: America’s Worst-Kept Secret.

4. How Reagan and Thatcher Stole Globalization.

5. A Bipartisan Empire.

6. Alan, Larry, and Bob Save the Privileged.

7. NAFTA: Who Got What?

8. The Constitution According to Davos.

9. America Abandoned.

10. After the Fall.

11. Imagining North America.

12. Toward, and Beyond, a Continental Democracy.

Notes.

Index.