A confidante of Republican powerbroker James Baker made the following comment to the Washington Monthly on the considerations that had led Baker to agree to head the ISG: “Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid a war at home—that things will fall apart not on the battlefield but at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics.”

This militarist response is another indication of the declining US influence in Africa and globally. The Los Angeles Times pointed out that the US had been increasing aid to Africa. “So far, however, the Chinese approach, focusing on economic cooperation, appears to be gaining ground. Bush has not visited Africa since his first term. By contrast, top Chinese officials have relayed across the continent every few months, winning points with no-strings-attached promises of economic support,” the article commented.

"The dramas that contained the seeds of today's rebellion played out in obscurity, as yet imperceptible to the naked American eye," Sweig writes in the course of her sweeping and pungent review of abrasive American foreign policies.

Kuznets did not feel the same about the rise as he did about the fall of inequality. That inequality tended to decline at some advanced stage of development, he seemed quite confident. . . .He emphasized the role of sectoral shifts as an engine of inequality, and mused more vaguely about the possible importance of the demographic transition.

Similarly, interest groups in developed nations benefit from favorable treatment by their governments, but these favors victimize people in developing nations who are trying to compete. It is bad enough, Stiglitz says, that thousands of wealthy American cotton farmers get billions of dollars in government subsidies; it is even worse that this depresses the world price of cotton, further impoverishing millions of African cotton farmers.

There's no proving Sweig's contention that Bush's "policies and nonpolicies . . . stripped bare the latent structural anti-American animus that had accumulated over time," but Kohut's Pew Research Center polls show that global opinion of the United States has plummeted under Bush — not just since its unnatural post-9/11 high, but since he took office.

Brooks claims that this reduction in poverty "supports the argument that we are seeing a drop in global inequality" and goes on to make the oversimplified, unqualified and unwarranted (by the data cited) argument that globalization "explains all this good news."

Is growth in fact shared "up and down the income ladder" under globalization? According to Korzeniewicz and Moran's analysis of World Bank data, "The share of world income accruing to the poorest 40% of the world's population diminished over the 1965-1990 period from 5.1% to 3.2%."

The battle over the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) recalls some familiar themes. The “modern” debate over trade barriers can be traced to the 19th century. Then as now, the debate has been dominated by special interests (land barons vs. merchants in the 19th century; the AFL-CIO vs. the Chamber of Commerce today). There is no question that trade liberalization creates winners and losers. Affected citizens and companies have every right to plead their case.

But Congress should consider how freer trade affects the nation as a whole. Since World War II the United States has led the international quest to liberalize world trade and investment. With leadership from the White House, Congress has slashed the simple average tariff rate from 40 percent in 1946 to 4 percent today, and other industrial nations have done much the same. After a half-century of steady liberalization it is fair to ask, what do Americans have to show?

As it turns out, quite a lot. Using four different methods, we estimate that the combination of shrinking distances—thanks to container ships, telecommunications and other new technologies—and lower political barriers to international trade and investment have generated an increase in US income of roughly $1 trillion a year (measured in 2003 dollars), or about 10 percent of gross domestic product. This translates to a gain in annual income of about $10,000 per household. Unfortunately for the cause of continued liberalization, Americans do not receive this money as a check marked “payoff from globalization.” Instead, the payoff is hidden within familiar channels: fatter paychecks, lower prices and better product choices (compare the telephones available now with the standard black model of 1980).

For free trade to work, nations must be able to export what they make more efficiently than their trading partners. By swapping jobs in importing-competing industries for those in export activities, the United States increases productivity for those workers by about 10 percent. Hence, by exporting some $1.5 trillion annually and using the proceeds to buy imports, trade raises U.S. GDP about $150 billion.

Unfortunately, the United States has not been conducting trade quite that way. Since George Bush took office, annual imports have climbed $834 billion but exports are up only $441 billion. The trade deficit has swelled to $750 billion.

Instead of redeploying displaced autoworkers to computer chip factories, those workers find jobs in restaurants or hotels, where productivity and wages are lower. That reduces GDP by about $250 billion, and wipes out the $150 billion gains from trade noted above.

Despite remarkable improvements in productivity, many American workers face stagnant wages or can't keep up with inflation. Too many are forced by trade out of jobs offering good pay and benefits.