Departmental Speaker Dr. Eric Helleiner gave a talk titled, “Backlash against free trade: the diverse ideological roots of neomercantilism,” on October 18, 2019.
Departmental Speaker Dr. Eric Helleiner gave a talk titled, “Backlash against free trade: the diverse ideological roots of neomercantilism,” on October 18, 2019.Abstract: Free trade ideology is being contested around the world by neomercantilists who prioritize the promotion of their state’s wealth and power through selective trade protectionism and other kinds of government economic activism. The rising backlash against free trade has been analyzed from many standpoints, but the ideological roots of neomercantilism remained relatively understudied. Indeed, dominant understandings of the history of this ideology are not very helpful for interpreting some of its most important contemporary forms. In this talk, Eric Helleiner argues for an alternative approach that recognizes the diversity of the roots of neomercantilist thought.
Bio: Eric Helleiner is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. His single authored books include States and the Reemergence of Global Finance (Cornell, 1994), The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical Perspective (Cornell, 2003), Towards North American Monetary Union? The Politics and History of Canada’s Exchange Rate Regime (McGill-Queen’s, 2006), The Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order (Cornell, 2014), and The Status Quo Crisis: Global Financial Governance After the 2008 Meltdown (Oxford, 2014). He has also published over 100 journal articles and book chapters, and has been a member of the Warwick Commission on International Financial Reform and the High Level Panel on the Governance of the Financial Stability Board. He has received the Killam Research Fellowship, the CPSA Prize in International Relations, the Trudeau Foundation Fellows Prize, and the Donner Book Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
