Essay

Using Carbaugh, class lectures, and Pomeranz and Topik, please write an essay (between 2-4 typewritten pages), in which you engage the following topic:

The relative “success” to this point of the U. S. presidential election cycle of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to no small extent has been a matter of their positions on the destructiveness of so-called “free trade” agreements and current international trade practices upon the U. S. economy.  For both Trump (who is almost certain to be the Republican candidate in the general election) and Sanders (who is almost certain to lose the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton), the “export” of jobs to nations like China has been an economic disaster for the American “middle class” and workers.  Yet, there has also been a difference in their approaches.  While Trump is a champion of market capitalism—but is someone who abhors the “bad deals” that he believes previous administrations have foisted on the American public—Sanders, in contrast, has criticized the financial rule of “Wall Street” and unbridled global capitalism in his appeal for trade policies that are guided more by “democratic socialism” and less by the pure profit motive.

Both candidates are, therefore, critics of the kind of “globalization” that historically first emerged with the inception of European capitalism and has spread ever since.  But, Trump’s critical view of globalization focuses on what he regards as temporary blips in a fixable global economic system; Sanders is less sanguine about the chances of altering capitalist globalization’s tendency to harm both workers and the non-working poor in the U. S. as well as in the rest of the world.

In a carefully written essay, please first write a short defense of both of these critical views on globalization and trade.  Then, please write a short criticism of these same views.  In writing your essay, you MUST make constant reference to the arguments about the benefits and costs or losses of globalization and trade that you have read about in the Carbaugh text and in the Pomeranz and Topik book, and that you have heard in class lectures and class discussions.  While it is fine (very much so) if you read up on and cite the actual views and stated positions of Trump and Sanders, it is NOT a requirement for answering this essay that you do so.  What is most important and to the point is presenting theoretically “sound” arguments for and against capitalist globalization and the trade that it spawns.  To do so, you MUST make reference to the economic concepts, theories, and ideas that you have learned in this course.