ABSTRACT
In the 1600s, Galileo was excommunicated for stating that earth was not flat and was not the center of the universe. In the twenty-first century, Friedman (2005) sold millions of copies of his book The World is Flat, by arguing that the “flattening” of the world is due to the growth in global trade and the Internet economy.* In the 1960s factories in the United States made 95% of the clothes and 98% of the shoes sold in the United States. Today only 5% of the clothes and 10% of the shoes are made in the United States. The emerging theme is the rapid growth in world trade beginning with the last quarter of the twentieth century. Even though the world gross domestic product (GDP) increase has been modest, the increase in world trade in manufacturing has been exponential during the last 50 years.
