In this book, the author develops six suggesting and complete chapters. He begins with an Introduction where he presents a cramped synthesis of the content of each chapter. In addition, he incorporates an epilogue (Chapter 7) in which the economic policy of the new North American government is addressed and its consequences for México and the United States.

Each chapter is supported by articles published in specialized pages and journals, among which some stand out: Project Syndicate, The World’s Opinion Page, EconoMonitor, Monthy Review; it also contains graphs and statistical tables with data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Dr. Huerta tells us, in the Introduction, that “this book analyzes how globalization, characterized by the economic liberalization and deregulation process, which reduces the participation and size of the government in the economy, and which leads the open economy market to determine the directions of the global and national economic events, has led to contexts of low growth, high unemployment, high levels of indebtedness, growing income inequality and external fragility and vulnerability of the economies that accentuate the economic, political and social dissatisfaction questioning this economic strategy that has only favored large capital” (p.17).

This idea indicates that in the world there is great discomfort with the globalization that has led to “an economy at the service of the 1 %... (since), currently the richest 1 % of the world population has more wealth than the remaining 99 % of people in the planet” (Informe Oxfam 2016).

On the other hand, the Mexican economy is treated broadly by the author in chapters 1, 3 and 6, and also in chapter 7, as has already been mentioned.

It’s important to approach the fundamental ideas that Huerta argues for México. For this purpose, we will review some presented in chapters 1, 3 and 6.

Part of the consequences of the central bank’s autonomy on the Mexican economy, which has the main objective of attaining “the stability of the purchasing power of the currency” and with this “the government ceased to have control of the currency and lost handle of the monetary and tax policy in favor of the growth and redistribution of resources”, thus losing “the sovereign management of the economic policy” and therefore “it will not be able to satisfy the demands of employment and welfare from the population, but rather has also sold and licensed assets to the private sector to guarantee fiscal discipline and face payment of its debts, so economic activity and employment generation contracts, and income inequality is accentuated” (p.23 and 24).

Huerta introduces the argument that “there is no democracy in decision making in policies that lead to the free mobility of merchandise and capitals, as in the structural reforms that reduce the participation and the size of the State in the economy” (p.26).

The national public opinion recognized the so-called “Pact for México”, committed to by the main political forces of the country and signed by these and the Federal Executive on December 2, 2012, and which led to establish the constitutional and legal reforms in the Legislative Agenda with which the structural reforms are specified. For this reason, he concludes that “the parties voted for these policies, although subordinate to the big capital, not defending the national interests or those of the large majorities in the country” (p.26).

To this situation it should be added that in the Mexican economy, the growing external openness “has not been accompanied by an increase in the participation of investment in the GDP”, neglecting the “internal conditions of accumulation and growth”, that is, practically with an “economy without endogenous growth conditions”.

In addition, he states that “economic liberalization and the policy that accompanies it has led for international trade to grow more than the GDP (Graph 6), which places the economy within a context of high dependence on the international context. Trade openness, which began since the 1980s (México entered the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1986), in addition to the large amount of free trade agreements that followed, have caused mediocre growth, in contrast to what had been obtained with the protectionist policy (Graph 6). The economy today has less endogenous conditions of accumulation and growth, and its dependence on the entry of capitals has been increased, making it more vulnerable to the behavior of external variables” (p.133, 134 and 135).

Now let’s go into chapter 6, which is titled: “Continuity or change of the economic policy”. In this chapter the author proposes an important path to lead México on the road to economic growth.

However, citing Huerta literally, it is worth to point out that “predominant economic policies favor the large capital at the expense of low growth, of recurring economic crises, of increasing the informal economy and the number of young people who do not study or work, and of not ensuring the pension funds for retirement and destabilizing the capital and currency market… the problems of low growth and unemployment, and deterioration of the standard of living of the population, growing income inequality, increase the dissatisfaction and questioning of the policies of trade and financial openness, and the predominant policy of fiscal austerity” (p. 204).

I will only describe what the author proposes as “Policy to face external adversities”:

Within this framework, Huerta concludes the chapter by saying that “the predominant free trade policy must be changed in order to revert income inequality. The financial must be made secondary in favor of the productive sector and full employment. (And he emphasizes). THE PROBLEM IS POLITICAL.” (p. 216).

In the next part, I will address the central proposal of the author, making the following questions: Are we facing a time of change marked by the twilight of globalization? What factors have influenced essentially for this? And, in addition, in what phase of this process is the global economy in? The response to these questions is in chapters 2, 4, 5 and 7.

Even when a flexible monetary policy has taken place by the central banks of developed countries, this has not been reflected into a higher economic growth, as shown by the United States and countries of the European Union. In fact, there is a discrepancy between these central banks since, on the one side, the FED has increased the interest rate while the Central European Bank and Japan has decreased it.

Huerta mentions that “the injection of liquidity that central banks have carried out through purchasing debt in the money markets has not flowed to the productive sector or increased public spending to increase the demand, employment and economic activity, so there have not been pressures on salaries and prices… the greatest liquidity has been channeled particularly in favor of the banks and the market of capitals, which has generated stock-exchange booms and an increase in the prices of financial assets. Graph 1 shows how the value of the actions in the financial markets of the US exceeded, since the end of 2012, the levels reached in 2007, before the 2008-2009 crisis” (p. 96 and 97).

In fact, “free trade has acted in detriment of growth in most economies”. The same cannot be said of China and India, which, in the author’s words, “have had a significant growth in recent decades and have reduced their differential with regards to developed countries; this cannot be said about the rest of the economies… globalization has transformed the global economy. To a large extent, the industry went to Asia… at the expense of the deindustrialization of the rest and their lower growth, by affecting some countries more than others, in function of their levels of competitiveness. Globalization has increased the inequality between countries” (p. 123, 124 and 125).

Practically, China “has been the economy favored by free trade at the global level, as well as Germany in the Euro Zone, having become creditors and countries with negative balances becoming their debtors” (p. 125).

On the other hand, emerging economies are undergoing problems because of the deceleration of the global economy, for its exports lose dynamics, in addition to a fall in “international prices of the products they export”.

Huerta also shows that in this stage of deceleration of the world economy, this has affected the dynamics of Chinese exports and economy; this situation is addressed in Chapter 4, titled “China ceases to be the motor of emerging economies” and, likewise, the different economic problems that China has gone through are pointed out, such as those related to pressure from “the United States… Japan… and European countries, for China to cease using the exchange rate as a competitive tool, and to sustain its competitiveness and the dynamics of its exports solely around the growth of productivity and low wages”. The result was that “the Chinese currency wound up rising since the middle of the first decade of this century (Graph 3), which together with the later rise in salaries in that country decreased its competitiveness” (p.147). This situation, together with the deceleration of the world economy, “has stopped the growth of its exports and its economy” (p.147).

China was the motor for growth of the economies linked to it, since it made a large demand of prime materials and foods, influencing the high international prices of these products and this benefitted the emerging countries. Thus, the economic deceleration of China has affected the global economy: falls in the stock exchanges in Japan, in the Euro Zone and in China itself (p.154).

Facing this panorama, in section 2 (Change of the economic model in China), Huerta says that: “China has changed its growth pattern towards internal consumption and services… this had led China to turn towards a growth strategy that rests on consumption and services, such as the substitution of imports of natural resources and foods” (p. 162).

Now we should ask ourselves: Why Brexit? And also: What were Donald Trump’s proposals to win the elections in the United States? These aspects are addressed by the author in chapters 5 and 7.

Brexit is a questioning to globalization and the European Union (EU), simply because the United Kingdom (UK) does not accept restrictions on “its sovereignty in decision making, both in fiscal policy and in others”. And also because the economic policies imposed by institutions in the EU have reduced the size and participation of the State in the economy, infringing not just on economic growth and employment with this, but also upon the expenses of social welfare, because there are not conditions to satisfy the demands from broad sectors of the population” (p. 178). The population has questioned these institutions and the policies it imposes, since the EU within the globalization framework is to blame for the high youth unemployment rates, the debt and migration problems that accompany this, and the growing income inequality (p.179).

The UK has two years to articulate the terms of its exit from the EU, as the referendum performed demands, and there is the intention from some of those responsible for EU institutions to give a good lesson to the UK, in order to discourage other countries to follow the path that the UK is following.

In his campaign, Donald Trump pronounced himself in favor of the “review of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the commercial relations with China, as well as for the expansion of public investment in infrastructure and the decrease of taxes on corporations and the high-income sectors to encourage investment… (with these) economic suggestions, it can be said that it breaks with trade openness and the policies of fiscal austerity that have been predominating and that his own party has been promoting and approving in his country. The defense that he makes of these policies is for economic growth and the generation of well-paid employment that have been lost in that country”.