A provocative look at how today’s trade conflicts are caused by governments promoting the interests of elites at the expense of workers

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize • Longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award • A Best Business Book of the Year by Strategy + Business • Selected by Financial Times as one of “Five Books to Boost Your Understanding of Tariffs and Trade Wars”

“The authors weave a complex tapestry of monetary, fiscal and social policies through history and offer opinions about what went right and what went wrong. . . . Worth reading for their insights into the history of trade and finance.”—George Melloan, Wall Street Journal

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today’s trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past thirty years. Across the world, the rich have prospered while workers can no longer afford to buy what they produce, have lost their jobs, or have been forced into higher levels of debt. In this thought‑provoking challenge to mainstream views, the authors provide a cohesive narrative that shows how the class wars of rising inequality are a threat to the global economy and international peace—and what we can do about it.