Economist Clyde Prestowitz, a veteran of the Reagan administration and prominent conservative critic of the policies and conduct of the Bush White House, will deliver the annual Charles L. Miller Lecture at 4 p.m. on April 4, in the Bush Room (10-105).
The title of his talk is "The World Turned Upside Down: The Impact of the Return of India and China to Their Historical Global Weight."
Prestowitz served as a counselor to the secretary of commerce during Reagan's first term (1981-1985). In that role, he led U.S. trade and investment negotiations with Japan, China, Latin America and Europe.
A specialist in international trade policy and economic competitiveness, Prestowitz is the founder and president of the Economic Strategy Institute (ESI), a Washington, D.C., think tank. ESI engages in public policy related to globalization.
In a 2005 opinion piece for the Boston Globe, Prestowitz criticized the "confluence of America's consumerism with the strategic, export-led growth policies of many other countries" and characterized globalization as a "kind of pyramid scheme" for the United States.
Prestowitz is the author of, most recently, "Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East."
Prestowitz, who has said his Republicanism "came in the DNA," has also written op-ed articles for prominent media in which he argues the Bush administration is mislabeling itself as conservative.
The current White House is "not conservative, it's radical. It's on the wrong track domestically. It's on the very wrong track internationally. As a patriot, as a conservative, as a Republican, it's important to try to change it," Prestowitz wrote in a 2005 article for Mother Jones magazine.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 22, 2006 (download PDF).
