Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, "Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Sep 11, 2025

Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, a history professor at the University of Lausanne, dives into the influence of US multinationals on globalization since 1945. She reveals how these corporations deliberately shaped policies to promote free trade, reflecting on their complex relationship with labor movements and protectionist policies. The discussion also touches on China’s economic integration and the recent populist backlash against globalization, urging a nuanced understanding of its benefits and inequalities. Schaufelbuehl offers a thought-provoking analysis of the globalization debate, challenging listeners to reconsider its historical narrative.

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INSIGHT

Globalization As A Political Project

Janick Schaufelbuehl shows globalization was politically constructed by powerful executives, not an inevitable force.
The U.S. Council for International Business led sustained lobbying to open markets and shape postwar institutions.

INSIGHT

Executives Drove Global Expansion

Corporate globalizers were senior executives who founded the U.S. Council in 1945 to promote free trade and investment.
Their actions directly increased the power and wealth of multinational corporations over decades.

ANECDOTE

Conflicting Views Within The Same Firm

Philip Reed (GE CEO) joined the U.S. Council while another GE leader, Ralph Cordiner, favored protectionism.
Executives joined the Council from belief, not always direct company mandate.

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Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) tells the story of an extraordinarily influential group of business executives at the helms of the largest US multinational corporations and their quest to drive globalization forward over the last eight decades. Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl argues that the spectacular expansion of international investment, trade, and production after 1945 cannot be understood without considering the role played by these corporate globalizers and the organization they created, the US Council (today’s United States Council for International Business). By shaping governmental policy through their congressional lobbying and close connections to successive presidential administrations, US Council members, including executives from General Electric, Coca Cola, and IBM, among others, consistently fought for ever more market deregulation, culminating in the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995.

Crusading for Globalization is also a book about those who opposed the growing might of multinationals. In the years immediately after World War II, resistance came from business protectionists, before labor and policymakers from the Global South joined the effort in the early 1970s. Schaufelbuehl breaks new ground by offering a panorama of this early anti-globalization movement, and by showing how the leaders of multinationals organized to limit its political influence. She also examines continuities between this early movement and the opposition to globalization that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century from the left and the populist right and discusses how business responded by promoting corporate social responsibility and voluntary guidelines.
The first book to shed light on what caused corporate executives to pursue a pro-globalization agenda and to examine their methods for dealing with their opponents, Crusading for Globalization reveals the historical roots of today’s disparities in wealth and income distribution.

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