A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

This paper is a book report on A Splendid Exchange, which was written by William J. Bernstein. In this book, Bernstein talks about the history of international trade. The message of this book is that the urge to trade has affected traders to improve on its transportation so that the goods can be more abundant, faster to obtain and readily available.

The desire for trade has led people to be ingenious and resourcefulness. Trading first started out to fulfill the basic needs. For instance, boats were only being used to transport goods because the traders faced a problem of how to transport the goods from here to there. In addition, in response to the traders’ desire to trade in further places, mariners improved the design of the ships. In wanting for the goods to reach the destination quicker, mariners studied the seasonal monsoon winds and use the knowledge to cross the Arabian Sea so that the shipping times could be reduced. Many more inventions during the early 20th century led to goods being able to be traded inexpensively and readily available in almost everywhere.

On the other end, Bernstein also explains that tariffs were the root cause of the US Civil War, and that protectionism significantly caused World War II to happen. Despite trading sometimes leading to wars, he says that countries are far more successful and stable when they are actively trading with their neighboring countries. He discusses that although protectionism tends to slow down the economy, and free trade allows economic growth, the greatest economic growth was during the period that had the greatest protectionism.