Trade Imbalance

Susan Aaronson is Research Associate Professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Business and the Elliott School of International Affairs. She is also a Consultant to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative based in Norway, which helps citizens and policymakers in resource rich countries monitor and account for extractive industry revenues. Until July 2006, she was Senior Fellow and Director of Globalization Studies at the Kenan Institute, the Washington branch of the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina. (The Washington office is now closed) From 2001–4, Aaronson devised and directed a major study, funded by the Ford, UN and Levi Strauss Foundations, that examined how US public policies can promote or undermine global corporate social responsibility. The project resulted in three reports on CSR in international markets; on CSR and Trade; and on CSR in China. With James Reeves, Aaronson also wrote a book on public policy and corporate responsibility: Corporate Responsibility in the Global Village. Aaronson is a frequent speaker on public understanding of globalization issues. She was a regular commentator on 'All Things Considered' in 1994–5, 'Marketplace' from 1995-1998, and 'Morning Edition', 1998–2001. She has also appeared on CNN, the BBC, and PBS to discuss trade and globalization issues. She is the author of 6 books and numerous articles on trade, investment, business and human rights and other globalization issues. Her books include Trade Imbalance: The Struggle to Weigh Human Rights in Trade Policymaking (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Trade and the American Dream and Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization. Aaronson has also written two primers on trade - 'Trade is Everybody's Business,' for high school students and 'Are there Trade Offs When Americans Trade?' for adults. These books relate trade to citizens' daily lives and t Jamie M. Zimmerman is Senior Advisor to the Global Assets Project within the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, which is working to develop vision and direction for global financial inclusion, particularly as they related to building assets for children and women in the developing world. She previously worked with Dr Aaronson as the Associate Director of Globalization Studies at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise of the University of North Carolina. She managed the field research for the developing country case studies for the book (Brazil, India and South Africa), travelling extensively within those countries for interviews. With Dr Aaronson, she published a number of articles and op-eds in such publications as Yale Global and Human Rights Quarterly. Prior to her time at Kenan, Jamie completed a short term consultancy with the New Jersey South America Trade Office in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she lived for a brief period in 1998. Zimmerman completed her masters in International Political Economy and International Development from the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky in 2003. She also received her Bachelor of Arts in foreign languages and international economics from the same university.

• Foreword; Preface and acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; 2. The World Trade Organization and human rights; 3. South Africa; 4. Brazil; 5. European Union; 6. United States; 7. Conclusion and recommendations; Appendix: interviews.