This book challenges both sides of the debate around international trade. Most mainstream economists advocate free trade as a mainstay of national and global prosperity. Meanwhile, many critics see trade causing inequality and poverty. Unfortunately, supporters and opponents share many assumptions about trade and the character of the international economy and produce similarly abstract and asocialized theories. Their propositions need to be investigated critically, and in doing so, this book begins the task of assessing when and how trade matters.

Bill Dunn considers and contests accounts of globalization and post-Fordism that see structural economic change in the late Twentieth-century as having fundamentally worsened the conditions and weakened the potential of labour. Including a comparative survey of restructuring in four major industries; automobiles, construction, microelectronics and finance, the book suggests the timing of change and its complex and contradictory nature undermine structural explanations of labour's situation. It redirects attention towards labour's political defeats and own institutional shortcomings.