Lacking evidences, the author chooses to use historical figures to prove his claim. Urmetzer argues that theories of the prominent economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which support free trade, are not applicable anymore at present time because economic world has changed since then, but the theories of John Maynard Keynes are still relevant in contemporary economies, defining free trade as only an ideology rather than a policy enforced among nations.
Introducing necessary organizations in order to implement free trade, the author talks about WTO and its failure in imposing free trade. Since nations have unequal power distribution amongst themselves, it is only possible to enforce free trade theoretically. Because strong countries like the United States have more influence on WTO than other countries when negotiating trade agreements, they eventually benefit much more from trades with third world countries by making the trade contracts in their favour. Even with WTO trying to help third world countries by financing them, inflation and interests that increased tremendously put third world countries still in debt. This hinders third world countries to gain independence in free trade but in contrast, experience forced trade, proving the argument of Urmetzer that free trade is not as neutral as it seems.
On the other hand, Industrial Sunset, by Steven High, discusses how industrial plant closings affected North America and its citizens in an economical, social, and political way between the years of 1969 and 1984. High begins the book by presenting and defining unclear jargons used regularly throughout his work such as Rust Belt, symbolizing the industrial decline in the U.S., and Golden Horseshoe, referring to the wealth of Southern Ontario.
High then, examines the impacts plant closures had on workers in industrial heartlands of both sides of the border. With the usage of numerous personal interviews, the author reveals the feelings of enormous number of employees who lost jobs and other consequences of the closed plants. Quoting direct words from the interviewees, he emphasizes the fact that displaced workers felt really frightful and that the plants which closed down not only meant losing a working place, but also meant loss of an internal part to the employees.
The author continues by noting the newly aroused environmental issues that had affected the industries to eventually relocate or shut down. He stresses out that the executives of multi-national corporations needed to make profits in the world of global competition and as a result, they had decided to employ a strategy of shifting the industrial plants to a place where there are cheaper labour with nice surroundings or closing down the unprofitable plants. By doing so, they gained a reputation of protecting the environment but at the same time, resulting in immense number of unemployment.
In the last two chapters, High brings attention of the reader to the trade union’s failure to resist plant shutdowns, the shift from manufacturing economy to service economy, foreign competition and concludes by stating that the effectiveness Canadians showed as a national community in mitigating the dreadful effects of deindustrialization were much better than fellow American worker’s struggle through this period of time.
Different approaches were employed by the authors in supporting their opinions. Especially, the structures used in the two books differ greatly. In High’s book, Industrial Sunset, High first gives the reader clear understanding of the terms that he frequently uses during his book as well as abundant background information. After providing the necessary information, he presents the feelings of the displaced workers, the process of deindustrialization, and the causes of plant shut downs. By using this logical cause-effect structure, High succeeds in building up his argument smoothly and eventually leave the reader with the impression that the argument is valid.
Urmetzer, however, fails to follow a logical structure with his insufficient evidence. He, himself, talks about his lack of evidence in the beginning. Not only that, he discusses the three famous historical figures, but rejects two of their ideas to be used in contemporary world later in the book, leaving the reader confused and making his argument less convincing. Not supplying enough credence to his previous points, it seems that Urmetzer just proceeds to talk about Third World and its economies in haste. As a consequence, the book lacked smooth transition between chapters but rather, a forced connection between the chapters of the book unfortunately.
Another huge difference between the two works would be the research method used by each author and its presentation in the works. Even though both of them used a variety of sources to back up their points, High wins again because he used much more sources including a large amount of primary sources to provide the reader with credential evidence that he collected himself. Not only having a huge sample of 137 history interviews and 26 personal interviews, High also incorporates statistics, articles, poems, songs, books and especially visuals beautifully to describe the industrial transformation more clearly beside his text. It is also evident that this broad range of sources allows viewing both American and Canadian workers accurately as well as reducing potential bias by looking at workers of different levels in companies such as board of directors, union office and political capital.
Urmetzer, in contrast, used mostly secondary sources with less credibility. Not only lacking primary sources, he lacks concrete statistics to validate his ideas. Statistics, being a very powerful tool in providing numerical data and proving ideas, this is a great weakness of Urmetzer’s book. While High is supplying a great deal of statistical information in the form of graphs and charts, Urmetzer only says that it is almost impossible to gather statistical information on free trade, although the excuse for missing statistical information for free trade is reasonable. However, the impression that Urmetzer’s argument is less persuasive is unavoidable.
The issues of free trade and deindustrialization have been analyzed by the authors in two different aspects. High specifically analyzed deindustrialization and its effects from American and Canadian perspectives and showed the difference between the countries very effectively. On the other hand, Urmetzer decided to compare the positive and negative sides of free trade, but he could have approached the issue by comparing a country with implementation of the free trade and a third world country not implementing it, to make the comparison more obvious.
Lastly, Urmetzer was not successful in proving his main thesis whereas High maintained consistency throughout his book and eventually, proves his argument. The chief purpose of a book is to prove the claimed thesis. In the beginning of the free trade book, Urmetzer argues that free trade is a neutral activity. Nevertheless, he ends the book suggesting that free trade has benefited only the first world countries, not third world countries who are still in debt. Therefore, he visibly made a mistake of not supporting his original thesis at the end of his book. On the contrary, High keeps his arguments throughout the book and gives the reader the impression that he succeeded in proving his idea. This is seen when he explains the effects of plant shutdowns from both Canadian and American experiences in his several chapters of the book.
