Veteran economics reporter David Lynch does an admirable job assembling the perspectives of key policymakers working to achieve the global economy we have today as well as its discontents. Despite that, I came away from this book feeling as I do about many mainstream economics books: there’s useful information here but key blind spots as well.

Perhaps the most telling example is his analysis of how the China came to be admitted to the global marketplace in the early 2000s. According to US politicians and policy makers, adding China to the WTO would not only produce economic benefits but political systems more to the liking of those in the US. Lynch laments towards the end of the book that China’s rise has failed to lead to liberalization in their governance and, therefore, they remain a threat to stability. Implicit in this framing is the notion that US actions over this same period were all driven by a desire for stability, which might be a bit confusing to anyone familiar with US actions during the so-called “Global War on Terror”.

He should be commended for including the perspective of those fighting the establishmenr of organizations like the WTO at landmark protests in Seattle and elsewhere. He lets them speak for themselves for the most part, though can’t resist letting his own more conventional views shine through. For example, his response to the claim that this global trading system was a means of extracting profits at the expense of workers, he expresses skepticism because corporate shareholders and executives hadn’t gotten “more greedy” over time. This also would be a surprise to anyone examining the rise of inequality between workers and owners over the last few decades.

On the positive side, I came away with a much clearer picture of why the issue of trade became such a potent political weapon for someone like Donald Trump as well as why those in favor of these policies were caught so flat-footted by his attacks on a trade system that many voters hated but politicians in both parties had embraced with near total conviction. Trump’s approach to trade may be sclerotic and muddled, but it didn’t take a genius to see the geographic concentration of manufacturing job losses could turn disaffection into votes, especially in the context of a US presidential election.

Lynch is blunt in his assessments, clear in his writing, and admirable in his attempt to answer an interesting question: why did so many of the promises of globalization fail to materialize? Economics jargon is kept to a minumum but so is systemic analysis or critque. Still, the assemblage of firsthand accounts for a story spanning decades make this a useful read to anyone interested in the development of globalization.

The world’s worst bet : how the globalization gamble went wrong (and what would make it right) / David J. Lynch. – PublicAffairs, 2025