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Eighty years after the Bretton Woods conference that charted out a road map for post-World War II reconstruction, the global economy is facing troublesome economic imbalances, soaring domestic political tensions over income distribution, flaring international conflict over industrial policies, and the failure of international cooperation in addressing potentially existential governance challenges in attenuating climate change and the governance of the digital transformation, including the new general purpose technologies in the nexus of big data and artificial intelligence. The perceived success of the Bretton Woods architecture in enabling postwar reconstruction has prompted calls for a "new Bretton Woods" to address these contemporary challenges. This paper critically examines the original Bretton Woods framework as conceived by its architects, reviews the extent to which it was actually implemented, the extent to which it worked as planned, and the extent to which it delivered on the aims of its architects. It argues that the benefits realized during the Bretton Woods era were largely products of economic and political circumstances that could not be replicated today--and moreover that the Bretton Woods framework cannot be credited with delivering globalization or faulted for its perceived failings. Further, the paper contends that current geopolitical and economic conditions more closely resemble those which motivated the unsuccessful 1933 London Monetary and Economic Conference and suggests that efforts should be turned to redoing London and attempting to improve upon it rather than trying to return to Bretton Woods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An economic interpretation of history suggests that war is a continuation of economic rivalry in pursuit of the object of desire in economics--economic rent. For the Middle East, the Industrial Revolution precipitated competition for control of its vast reserves of oil, a critical complementary asset for the machine age. The economic rents accruing to oil subjected the region to the "natural resource curse" of under-development and conflict between hegemonic powers. The escalation of US-China competition to dominate the key technologies of the modern digital economy into a full-blown economic and technological war squeezed China in the markets of the United States and its allies, pushing China to alternatives, including the Middle East, where it now has a pervasive economic presence through the Belt and Road Initiative, which has provided it a platform for diplomatic engagement. Any illusions of China rapidly converting its growing economic presence into leverage for peace in the region, which its brokerage of the Iran-Saudi Arabia restoration of diplomatic relations might have inspired, have been rudely shattered by the outbreak of war between Gaza and Israel. The key takeaway, however, is that, in the Middle East, the technological conditions that drive economic rivalry between China and the United States do not drive conflict between the two in the Middle East and that can only be good for the region. The first Industrial Revolution brought conflict to the region; the subsequent industrial revolutions are moving the nexus for conflict elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the economic and political impact of Canada's special duty law, implemented in 1904 and considered to be the first anti-dumping law. The era in which the Canadian law emerged is contrasted with the current rise of a global economy, and an explanation is presented regarding why anti-dumping laws are proliferating now when they did not a century ago.