Archived: POL 3176 International Political Economy Winter 2017

ARCHIVED Webpage for POL 3176: International Political Economy):

Find course-related documents (Syllabus, Assignment Guidelines, etc.) on Blackboard - Virtual Campus. Current news stories related to our course below... (we will discuss these in class).

International Political Economy in the NEWS:
Wednesday, March 8th, 2017: An age-old question for International Political Economy - economic planning or deregulation? Pittis ways in here, in the context of China and USA.

 Tuesday, February 14th, 2017: Well, Prime Minister Trudeau met with President Trump yesterday, and although they didn't get into the details, a lot has been made of what Trump had in mind when he noted he wanted to "tweak" NAFTA. Given this week's focus on trade in IPE, and our class presentation on NAFTA tomorrow, please make sure you are acquainted with this news story.

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017: Given our discussions this week about monetarism and the collapse of the Bretton Woods era gold and fixed currency exchanges, this article about currency manipulation - or Trump's claims of other nations' manipulation of their currencites - seems appropriate. What would be the value in another America's trade partners devaluing their currencies? Do you buy Trump's argument that other nations are intentionally devaluing their currencies to make American exports more unattractive? What are the chances things could spiral out of control and lead to a currency war, and what would be the implications of said war? To be discussed in class...

 Tuesday, January 24th, 2017: Here's another Peter Armstrong interview which relates to the themes of our class. This time Peter talks with Linda Hasenfratz, CEO of a major auto parts company, regarding the latest talk about renegotiating NAFTA and Trump's signalling of wanting to favour domestic industries and tax foreign auto parts. Do you buy Hasenfratz's argument that taxing cross border trade in the auto sector will negatively affect everyone (who are the winners and losers of such an approach)? Will sharing "the facts" with Trump work to sway his plans? To what extent is this type of rhetoric from the Trump administration a "bittersweet victory" for the political left?
Tuesday, January 17th, 2017: In the wake of yesterday's news release from Oxfam regarding growing inequality both domestically and globally, the CBC's Peter Armstrong spoke with author Chris Kutarna about some of the forces shaping today's inequality. We will take a look at this interview in class and discuss some of the implications for inequality.
Credit: K. Siers, Charlotte Observer, 2016
Thursday, January 5th, 2017: For a while this was all better than fiction, but now it's just confusing hearsay with each actor pushing their own narrative. Was Russia behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee which is said to have played a role in Trump's defeat of Clinton? We'll probably never really know, but strange allegiances are forming over this scandal which seem to be altering long-held geopolitical alliances. As the New York Times is reporting today, Trump, Putin and now Wikileaks founder Julian Assange are all on the same side of the debate, claiming that Russia was not the source of the leaked documents. But clearly they all have interests in maintaining that 'reality'. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republican traditionalists are siding with the CIA, FBI and NSA's story which clearly places the blame on Russian state-sponsored hacking, which they consider a grave threat to the US national security. How will this all play out? It seems only the zaniest of fiction writers could come up with an accurate vision of the most plausible outcome...

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