Trading for Good: How Global Trade Can be Made to Serve People Not Money

It seems almost impossible to talk about trade without immediately invoking the idea of war. Countries like the United States and China slap tariffs on each other in a tit-for-tat fight over imbalances and surpluses. And on the ideological side, there has raged a decades-long contest between two extremes: free trade ideologues who regard trade as an end in itself, and protectionists, who view it as a destructive force to be contained. We seem to be in an endless cycle of trade battles, and it has left much of the world on the losing side. But these tired approaches don’t have to be the default approach. There is another way to trade—one with the interests of people, not profit, at its heart. In this visionary work, Christian Felber, founder of the Economy for the Common Good movement, offers a dazzling new paradigm for the global trading order. Moving past the “free trade religion” that has reigned since Adam Smith, Felber champions an alternative approach in which trade serves the wider interests of society, incorporating the key issues of our time: human rights, climate change, and the growing divide between richer and poorer countries. He proposes the groundbreaking idea of an “Ethical Trade Zone,” founded on a principled approach to tariffs and trade policies, and built with international cooperation on trade, taxation, and labor. Trading for Good is a refreshing new approach to our global trade system that calls on all of us to think differently and trade more ethically. Felber shows how this brave new economic world can be built democratically from the grassroots up, and how trading for good can be made a reality.