This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For decades, economic arguments in this

country, in the broadest sense, were usually over taxes and spending.

But for a long time, Republicans and most Democrats alike have been in favor of free trade,

the idea that the global flow of goods and services should be as open as possible for the sake of growth and efficiency.

Even if it hurt some workers, the prevailing

economic wisdom was that free trade was a necessary aspect of capitalism. Now, this was and has always

been contentious. Unions of fought agreements like NAFTA, critics say that the globalized economy

led to de-industrialization in much of the country,

and that deindustrialization, as we know, gave real fuel to Donald Trump's populism.

Trump has been a longtime proponent of tariffs, and he seems to relish the prospect of a major trade war with the Chinese.

Those positions reach their fruition with his highly chaotic tariff rollout recently,

which, of course, tanked the stock market and put us near the brink of a global recession.

Even many Trump voters have told pollsters that they disapprove of this tariff policy. At least it's

chaotic nature. A new book by John Cassidy, our staff writer, takes a long view of these debates.

It's called capitalism and its critics, a history. Cassidy has been covering economics for

the New Yorker for a long time. And he writes our weekly column

called The Financial Page. Now, John, I think most people in America think of capitalism

almost as the eternal, natural order of the universe somehow like the weather. But it has a

real beginning, and that's where you start your book. So how did capitalism start, and what did

it replace? Yeah, I mean, that's actually a pretty complicated question. Most of the book,

which I've written about, is industrial capitalism. And we do have a start date for that. It's usually

...