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Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word by Fred Hochberg; Avid Reader Press
Fred Hochberg’s “Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word” reminds the public that free trade is fully ingrained in products used daily around the world in spite of the anti-trade rhetoric in American politics during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Hochberg walks through six everyday items, from fruit to the iPhone and Hollywood, that are replete with parts sourced around the world. Hochberg served as the Chairman of the Export-Import Bank under President Barack Obama from 2009 until 2017. After leaving the Obama administration, he joined the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, where he lectured on the main issues on trade at the time: renegotiation of NAFTA, burgeoning trade war between US and China, and the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Those seminars served as the basis of “Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word”.
Hochberg injects interesting anecdotes into his examination of everyday products. Do you know that the most American car is the Honda Odyssey? The Detroit auto makers with the Chevrolet Corvette and Volt lag behind in 13th and 14th on that list yet speaks to the power of free trade. Hochberg’s colleague in the Obama administration often complained about his wife’s penchant for Honda Odysseys. Reality has an odd habit of catching up with humor.
Hochberg recounts Boris Yeltsin’s 1989 visit to a local Houston supermarket prior to the fall of the USSR. The number of products available in the supermarket without a line out the door in a mid-size city shocked the future president of Russia. Years later, Yeltsin would quip in response to why he wanted a different path for Russia, “America and its supermarkets”
Hochberg’s critique of the Trump Trade War scorches the misunderstanding of basic trade economics and accounting. “Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word” serves as an introduction to neophytes in the topic, while drawing a contrast to why trade still works and is necessary.
While “Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word” offers a full-throated defense of free trade and highlights the fatal flaws of the anti-trade rhetoric, Hochberg does not seize the opportunity to analyze the trade deal victories and failures during the Obama administration nor does he bring to light the issues at the WTO that disturbs the Trump administration. Weaknesses of the WTO such as the failure of the Doha Round too often were relegated as a passing footnote, with the reality of not only an ongoing trade war, but also the structure of the system threatened to become undone.
Released immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic, Hochberg paints a hopeful picture of the future driven by free trade with innovation as an unprotected sidekick. In the backdrop of a repositioning of post-pandemic economy, readers should take this as a call to action to dream about a world beyond the advances of the 2010s and to stop clinging to the 2000s. With advances from the post-Great Financial Crisis economic growth quickly undone in less than three months by a health pandemic, free trade and innovation should be forces to help the world recover.
