Jagdish Bhagwati is a proponent of globalization and its attendant economic system, capitalism, and that is made quite clear in the first section of his book, In Defense of Globalization. The first section, titled, "Coping with Anti-Globalization," addresses why critics of globalization can be dismissed, something he intends to do later in the book. There are numerous references to later chapters, for example, where he takes on critics from NGOs to young college-age protesters.
At this point in the book, Bhagwati freely dismisses his critics and their concerns as little more than "rubbish" even though he also indicates that he himself favors some type of control of globalization. One reference to rubbish is found on page 5; on page 32, he begins a chapter titled, "Globalization is Good, But Not Good Enough" which suggests, among other things, not that polluters should stop polluting, but that they should instead pay a type of pollution tax when they ruin certain ecology systems (Bhagwati, 2004, p. 33).
Bhagwati's arguments in this first section of the book decry critics of globalization as focused on isolated incidents of corporate corruption rather than considering the whole picture, and he maintains that overall, globalization reduces negative social events such as child labor. The fact that critics of globalization often come from rich countries is evidence to him that the poor countries favor globalization. In a perverse twist, he takes particular aim at non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are some of the most vocal critics of globalization, using the same isolated incidents of corruption or hidden agendas that he derides in critics of globalization (Bhagwati, 2004, pp. 37-44).
It is difficult to cite weaknesses in his economic arguments in this section of the book because he refers to later chapters where he promises to explain all. These first four chapters lay out his premis...