Goodman is willing to ask difficult questions, and he amply demonstrates that low prices can come with high costs.
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of supply chains, but this well-documented study shows how the problem has deep roots.
In this follow-up to Davos Man and Past Due, Goodman, a global economics correspondent for the New York Times, delves into the complex webs of technology, finance, production, and transport that underpin the global economy. He explains how the internet transformed the way that trade was organized, and it happened at about the same time that China started its explosive economic growth. The Chinese leadership became adept at gaming the rules of the World Trade Organization, but Goodman is also unforgiving of the thousands of American companies that rushed headlong into China looking for lower costs and higher profits. Another ingredient, pushed along by a class of ruthless consultants, was the move toward just-in-time inventory systems, which emphasized continual flow and limited stockpiling. The system was adequate, if not entirely smooth—until the pandemic hit and everything came to a shuddering halt. Shipping turned into a traffic jam, supermarket shelves emptied, and suddenly the drive for efficiency looked like a recipe for disaster. Even factories in Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Turkey, and other nations turned out to be dependent on inputs from China. Goodman systematically tracks his way through the issues, mixing economic analysis with interviews from the hardscrabble tiers of the infrastructure network. At the end of the book, the author advocates for a thorough rethinking of policy, calling for “a return to the mode of governance that prevailed in the United States from the end of World War II through the late 1970s.” Even though that shift is unlikely, this book should be in the hands of policymakers and economists before the next crisis emerges.
Goodman is willing to ask difficult questions, and he amply demonstrates that low prices can come with high costs.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780063257924
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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