Can free trade be fair trade? | Jagdish Bhagwati | Big Think

Can free trade be fair trade?

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is free trade fair trade?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jagdish Bhagwati:

One of the most influential trade theorists of his generation, Jagdish Bhagwati is a professor of economics at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1991-1993 Bhagwati was an Economic Policy Advisor to Arthur Dunkel, the Director of GATT. For the World Trade Organization, he has been an External Advisor to the WTO and has served on the Expert Group on the Future of the WTO appointed by the Director General. Bhagwati has been a Special Advisor to the UN on Globalization. He was also on the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cartoso on the future of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Bhagwati is the recipient of several prizes and honorary degrees, including Gold and Silver Stars from Japan's Order of the Rising Sun and the Padma Vibhushan from the government of India. The author and/or editor of over fifty volumes and over three hundred articles, Bhagwati's articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New Republic and The Times Literary Supplement. He founded the Journal of International Economics in 1971 and another journal, Economics & Politics, in 1989.

His most recent books are In Defense of Globalization (2004) and Free Trade Today (2002); his early books, particularly India: Planning for Industrialization (1970) and India (1975) opened the doors for current economic reform in India; on these reforms he was advisor to India's Finance Minister, now Prime Minister.

Bhagwati has delivered lectures at many top educational institutions and appeared on television shows including the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, the Charlie Rose Show and Bloomberg. He is a director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, on the board of the Academic Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch, Asia and on the Council of the Economic Priorities Accreditation Agency. The recipient of many awards, among them the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, the Bernhard Harms Prize, the Kenan Prize, the John R. Commons Award, the Freedom Prize and the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy, he has been awarded honorary degrees from several universities.

Jagdish Bhagwati graduated from Cambridge University in 1956 and continued his studies at MIT and Oxford. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, he was a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, the Delhi School of Economics, and MIT.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Jagdish Bhagwati: You see fairness is a very funny concept in the sense that fairness, as we all say all the time, is in the eye of the beholder. So when you look at fairness, take it in the context in which you __________.

Now let me take the rich country context, and particularly the United States. I grew up in India, studied in England, and went back to India. I have studied European countries. I have lived in the United States. I would say there’s a difference between Europeans, for example, and the Americans; that the Americans worry more about fairness and less about justice because we think we have mobility. So if we have a fair competition, we can get there.

So if somebody even in Harlem, if you were to have Mr. _________ or Mr. Ruben, who was a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, if their wealth doubles, it is conceivable that somebody in Harlem will think, “Aha! The size of the lottery ticket has gone up because I have a shot at it, too.” So if you believe in the mobility, whether it’s true or false, objectively, American mobility is not as dramatic as people think. But most Americans believe in it. That being the case, they believe not in equal outcomes, but they believe in equality of opportunity.

Take England. England is more static, more structured, more futile in many respects. This is why many Indians who come from a similar futile country take to England like a duck to water. You know you feel perfectly happy there.

Read the full transcript at