The Trap

I decided to pick up Jimmy's paperback again recently after listening to VP JD Vance give a resounding speech at the EU's Munich Security Conference. I'm glad I did as it reminded me of some of the values he spoke about during interviews and prescient warnings he wrote about in this very book. This review is by no means thorough, I urge you to pick up the book and read away.

Published in 1994, The Trap is Sir James Goldsmith’s fiery deconstruction of globalisation, free trade, and the increasing centralisation of political power. He warns that exposing Western economies to competition from low-wage nations would lead to mass job losses, social upheaval, and a decline in national self-sufficiency among other repercussions. Decades later, his predictions seem eerily accurate as we lick our wounds today. It’s almost as if the political script of the past 10–15 years had been drafted from his political activism that was far too short lived. His foresight on the strain between national identity and global integration screams louder with each passing year.

An advocate for localism, Goldsmith believed governance should be rooted in the needs of individual nations and, crucially, in the hands of local people rather than distant bureaucracies detached from local reality and, also crucially, removability. He saw the EU as an undemocratic force that would strip nations of sovereignty, replacing accountable decision-making with rigid, centralised control. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he championed decentralisation, arguing that power should flow downward to communities rather than upward to national or supranational elites.

Main ideas

• Globalisation is a self-reinforcing trap
• Localism over centralisation
• The EU is fundamentally undemocratic
• Economic theory must be tested in reality for it to have any value
• Not all trade is good trade (Buffet import certs / tariffs)
• Agriculture is a vital component of sovereignty
• Sovereignty isn't the same as isolationism