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Sandcastle Empire

Eamonn Fingleton's commentaries on the politics and economics of American decline

 
 
  • About Eamonn Fingleton
  • Thirty years of prescience
  • Books
    • In the Jaws of the Dragon
    • In Praise of Hard Industries
    • Blindside
  • Excerpt from In the Jaws of the Dragon
  • Contact
  • Wikipedia and Truth: One Author’s Experience

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Free Trade Fiasco: The case against trade liberalization.

Sandcastle Empire Posted on January 13, 2025 by adminJanuary 13, 2025

Published in The International Economy – Summer 2024. When Robert Lighthizer published his memoirs last year, it was no surprise that he let rip at free trade. After all, he is a protectionist who, in his erstwhile capacity as United … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

Protectionism Is (Almost) Mainstream

Sandcastle Empire Posted on February 29, 2024 by Eamonn FingletonJanuary 12, 2025

Lighthizer, Robert. No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers: New York: Broadside Books, 2023. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Often attributed to John Maynard Keynes, this … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

The East Asian miracle: a note

Sandcastle Empire Posted on January 28, 2024 by adminJanuary 28, 2024

East Asia’s economic  policymakers have identified the manufacture of advanced intermediate goods as the key to economic leadership.  Such goods include the highly purified materials, the precisely engineered  components and the state-of-the-art production machines needed by  other nations to make the world’s consumer goods.   The special  significance of advanced intermediate … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

The Myth of Post-industrialism

Sandcastle Empire Posted on January 18, 2023 by Eamonn FingletonJanuary 20, 2023

By Eamonn Fingleton America’s shuttered factories and the false hope of post-industrialism. (This article first appeared in the November-December 2022 issue of The American Conservative.) In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American nation … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

America’s Shuttered Factories and the False Hope of Post-Industrialism

Sandcastle Empire Posted on January 16, 2023 by Eamonn FingletonJanuary 28, 2024

Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell convinced America that manufacturing didn’t matter. He was wrong. By Eamonn Fingleton In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. Navy doubled its fleet within a year and quadrupled it before … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

The rise of East Asia and an epochal threat to American freedoms

Sandcastle Empire Posted on January 4, 2022 by Eamonn FingletonJanuary 4, 2022

By Eamonn Fingleton (This article appears in the January-February 2022 issue of The American Conservative. To read it in pdf form,  please click here.) In April 1998 Sony Corporation chairman Norio Ohga made world headlines with this comment: “The Japanese economy … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

The long arm of Japanese industrial policy: Northern Ireland’s experience

Sandcastle Empire Posted on October 14, 2020 by Eamonn FingletonOctober 25, 2020

In Dublin, Ireland, where I have lived in recent years, many observers view East Asian economics as a remote issue of little interest in Western Europe. As I discovered the other day, it is an attitude shared even by some … Continue reading →

Posted in Japan, Manufacturing, Press, Trade

On VJ Day, a hard look at an atom bomb apologist

Sandcastle Empire Posted on August 15, 2020 by Eamonn FingletonAugust 17, 2020

By Eamonn Fingleton If you Google “Laurens van der Post” and “Hiroshima”, you’ll turn up hundreds of thousands of results. This confirms something that some observers have known for years: that though the South African-born author Laurens van der Post … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade, Japan

Was the Hiroshima bomb justified?

Sandcastle Empire Posted on August 6, 2020 by Eamonn FingletonAugust 7, 2020

By Eamonn Fingleton It is a question that comes up every year: was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima justified? This year — the 75th anniversary of the attack — the question seems more pertinent than ever. The bombing, which took … Continue reading →

Posted in International Trade

Some of my Forbes commentaries

Sandcastle Empire Posted on October 26, 2016 by Eamonn FingletonAugust 7, 2020

  If you click through on the headings below, you can get to the articles concerned. Most of them focus on international trade or American decline or both. For my first item, however, I chose something different — partly because it … Continue reading →

Posted in American decline, China, Global economy, History, Japan, Manufacturing, Press, Service economy, Sino-Japanese relations, Trade | Tagged articles, commentaries, forbes.com

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Recent Posts

  • Free Trade Fiasco: The case against trade liberalization.
  • Protectionism Is (Almost) Mainstream
  • The East Asian miracle: a note
  • The Myth of Post-industrialism
  • America’s Shuttered Factories and the False Hope of Post-Industrialism

Categories

  • American decline (39)
  • Book reviews (13)
  • China (18)
  • Global economy (44)
  • Great East Japan Earthquake (1)
  • History (21)
  • International Trade (17)
  • Japan (56)
  • Manufacturing (34)
  • Press (33)
  • Service economy (8)
  • Sino-Japanese relations (15)
  • Trade (41)

Categories

  • American decline
  • Book reviews
  • China
  • Global economy
  • Great East Japan Earthquake
  • History
  • International Trade
  • Japan
  • Manufacturing
  • Press
  • Service economy
  • Sino-Japanese relations
  • Trade
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