Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton says Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s US presidency campaign and Britain’s shock vote to quit the EU are symptoms of a botched drive to integrate globally.
In an interview, the British-US poverty expert said that Trump is “not a good voice” for those neglected by the global movement toward economic and financial integration.
Nor, added the Princeton University professor, is “Brexit” likely to benefit its supporters.
Inequalities have grown since the 1970s and become more marked with a globalization drive that hits certain parts of the population, mainly in rich countries, Deaton told reporters, on the publication in French of his 2013 book The Great Escape.
“If we don’t deal with that, if we don’t somehow make globalization benefit those people too or we share the prosperity that comes through globalization, then I think that we are in considerable danger,” the 71-year-old Nobel laureate said.
Populist politicians such as Trump in the US, or Britons’ unexpected June decision to slam the door on 40 years of EU membership are “part of the result of not handling globalization well,” he said.
However, he added that globalization was not solely to blame.
“A lot of people in America and Europe feel that their governments are not representing them very much,” Deaton said.
The academic, who has spent more than 30 years in the US, won the Nobel Prize in Economics last year for his groundbreaking work on poverty.
He was honored for using household surveys to show how consumers, particularly the poor, decide what to buy, and how policymakers can help them.
Hailed for its eloquent writing and deep research, The Great Escape outlined how overall human welfare — especially longevity and prosperity — has risen spectacularly over time, even though the inequality gap between rich and poor has widened.
Times of weak economic growth exacerbate the problem, while the bailing out of banks after the 2008 financial crisis, the worst economic turbulence since the Great Depression, still lingers bitterly in people’s memories, he said.
“If you think about those bailouts that happened in 2008, that was a situation in which the government gave at our expense enormous sums of money to some of the richest people who have ever existed on Earth,” Deaton said. “And I think that many Americans are very, very angry about that still.”
The EU is also leaving its citizens feeling disillusioned, he said.
“The European project has become problematic [because it is] now pushing to the point that people think that their interests are not being taken into account,” Deaton said.
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
TARIFF CONCERNS: Semiconductor suppliers are tempering expectations for the traditionally strong third quarter, citing US tariff uncertainty and a stronger NT dollar Several Taiwanese semiconductor suppliers are taking a cautious view of the third quarter — typically a peak season for the industry — citing uncertainty over US tariffs and the stronger New Taiwan dollar. Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科技) said that customers accelerated orders in the first half of the year to avoid potential tariffs threatened by US President Donald Trump’s administration. As a result, it anticipates weaker-than-usual peak-season demand in the third quarter. The US tariff plan, announced on April 2, initially proposed a 32 percent duty on Taiwanese goods. Its implementation was postponed by 90 days to July 9, then
RSS