Trade Secrets: The truth about the US trade deal and how we can stop it – by Nick Dearden
Date: 24 August 2020
Campaigns: Trade
Published by Global Justice Now 24 August 2020
Paperback £5 | Ebook available | globaljustice.org.uk/tradesecrets
Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden’s new book is a comprehensive exposé of the corporate agenda behind the US trade deal.
The book highlights how the push for this deal has emerged from a long held desire by a section of Britain’s establishment to undermine protections and standards and give the market free rein over large swathes of our society. In doing so, it lifts the lid on one of the most controversial issues in British politics today, a controversy which goes to the heart of what type of country Britain will become over the next generation.
Based on a thorough analysis of leaked papers from three years of secretive talks, as well as multiple other official documents and sources, Trade Secrets covers the key information and arguments that everyone needs to know about the US trade threat, what’s behind it, and how we can beat it.
Dearden exposes some of the key problems in the global trade system, including the way trade rules exacerbate climate change, perpetuate inequality and drive down standards. After looking at what campaigners can learn from previous protest movements against contentious trade deals, he sets out a framework for a different sort of trade system which can lay the foundations for a more sustainable and equal international economy.
Praise for Trade Secrets
“This book demonstrates with clarity and authority why trade deals matter to all of us. It shows how trade policy goes to the very heart of the quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat and the public services we depend on. And it demonstrates that it’s not only our social and environmental standards which are at stake, but the nature of our democracy itself. Read it, then take action.”
– Caroline Lucas MP
“To understand trade deals requires the will to fight your way through a dense thicket of negotiations, obscure regulations and arcane language. I have long placed my trust in Nick Dearden’s sound analyses and forensic examination of trade deals. My hope is that he becomes your trusted guide too.”
– Ann Pettifor, award-winning economist and author of The Case for the Green New Deal
“Virtually everything about post-Brexit Britain will be defined by our trade deal with the United States. This is not about a few chlorinated chickens – everything we value will be restructured in the interests of multinational corporations. Brilliantly written and lucidly argued, this book is the most important thing you’ll read about the US trade deal, by Britain’s leading expert on the topic.”
– Jason Hickel, economic anthropologist and author of The Divide
“This book explains in painstaking detail how the proposed trade deal means the transformation of the the UK economy into a mirror image of that of the United States: public services decimated, agricultural trade with few public health safeguards, and the unrestricted freedom of Google, Facebook and Amazon to scoop up people’s most private behavior to enable corporations to target them more profitably.”
– Walden Bello, author, Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash
About the author
NICK DEARDEN is the director of Global Justice Now. He has been a campaigner against corporate globalisation and for global economic justice for over 20 years. He was a leading voice in the UK and European movement against the now abandoned EU US trade deal (TTIP) and a founder of the UK’s Stop Trump coalition. He regularly contributes political analysis to publications including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Open Democracy, Red Pepper and Soundings journal and has appeared widely in broadcast media including BBC Radio 4, BBC Panorama, BBC World Service, Sky News, Good Morning Britain and LBC Radio.
Published by Global Justice Now, with text under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0).
Sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung with funds of the Federal Republic of Germany. This publication or parts of it can be used by others for free as long as they provide a proper reference to the original publication. The content of the publication is the sole responsibility of Global Justice Now and does not necessarily reflect a position of RLS.
