The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy.

• Author: Lindsey, Brink

Patrick J. Buchanan, New York: Little, Brown, 376 pages, $22.95

The ongoing globalization of economic life leaves many Americans nervous and suspicious. According to a Business Week poll taken last fall, 56 percent of Americans believe that expanded trade will destroy more jobs than it creates, and 40 percent think that more trade means lower wages, compared to only 17 percent who believe the opposite.

Pat Buchanan has played to this anxiety in two presidential campaigns and is now preparing to do so a third time. To that end he has written The Great Betrayal, a root-and-branch rejection of free trade in favor of a "new nationalism." Consider this book a preview of his 2000 campaign strategy.

Buchanan advances two distinct and contradictory lines of argument in The Great Betrayal. On the one hand, he defends protectionism as sound economic policy. According to Buchanan, tariff barriers promoted American prosperity throughout much of our history, while their progressive elimination in recent decades has begotten industrial decline and falling living standards. At the same time, he lambastes free trade "ideology" for exalting economic efficiency over concern with flesh-and-blood people - specifically, the people whose lives have been disrupted by foreign competition. Buchanan calls upon "conservatives of the heart" to embrace protectionism on the ground that there's more to life than economics.

So which is it: Is free trade inefficient or too efficient? Neither position is tenable, and by flipping back and forth between the two, Buchanan manages to get the worst of both worlds.

First, let's look at Buchanan's claim that import barriers promote economic vitality. His chief evidence is historical: Throughout much of its existence, the United States maintained high and consciously protectionist tariffs while experiencing rapid growth and development. True enough, but what of it? In all countries at all times, governments have hampered markets with ill-advised restrictions on freedom, and yet the creative power of markets has persevered to deliver the goods. That's no proof that the restrictions helped. The fact that I can carry a bag of cement up a hill doesn't mean it's making me go faster.

And Buchanan neglects to mention that despite the existence of protectionist tariffs, Americans continued to enjoy other kinds of unregulated international trade. Although foreign goods were often kept out, foreign money wasn't: British investment in particular played a major role in bankrolling American canals...