Workers at a Chinese factory in Beijing last month. China strongly opposed President Barack Obama's decision to impose punitive tariffs on imports of car and light truck tires, calling it protectionism that violates World Trade Organization rules. (AP)

Post your comments below

The G20 sits down in Pittsburgh today — leaders of the world’s rich and emerging-rich nations.

The Obama administration is clear on what it wants out of Pittsburgh: a commitment to “rebalance” the world’s economy, for China to buy more of its own products, and Americans to make more of their own.

Coming on the heels of a fat new U.S. tariff on Chinese tires, that sounds to some like trade-war talk. Protectionism. The end of globalization as we’ve known it.

Some Americans want that. Others say, hold on.

This hour, On Point: The G20, trade, and “rebalancing” the global economy.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Zanny Minton Beddoes, economics editor for The Economist. She edited last week’s cover story, “Playing with fire,” about the Obama administration’s “alarming trade row with China.” Also see The Economist editorial, “Economic vandalism,” on Barack Obama and free trade.

Also from Washington we’re joined by Robert Scott, senior international economist and director of international programs at the Economic Policy Institute. He studies trade agreements and their impact on working people in the U.S. and other countries, as well as the macro-economic effects of trade and capital flows.

Joining us from Ithaca, New York, is Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China Division. His recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal was headlined “A Dangerous Game of Trade ‘Chicken.’”

Nobel Prize-winning thinker Amartya Sen grew up well-off in an India where injustice was on everyday display. He’s been thinking about justice and injustice ever since. Not in one country, but the whole world.

Now, at 75, Sen is writing deeply on how to create justice — social justice — on a globalized planet.

A planet where no two cultures have just the same concept of justice.

A planet where long effort to build ideal institutions of justice have fallen painfully short.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with Amartya Sen, on the world we live in and the idea of justice.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Amartya Sen joins us in our studio. He is a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. A son of Bengal, he is a longtime champion of the disadvantaged. His new book is, a kind of great summation, is “The Idea of Justice.” London’s Independent calls it “a monumental work.”

They started out taping street musicians all over the world, and layering the tracks — Spain on Nepal on South Africa on New Orleans — until they had a kind of global street symphony.

Then came video, and Bono, and PBS, and a distribution deal with Starbucks.

And suddenly they had a kind of global movement. They call it “Playing for Change.”

This hour, “Playing for Change” creator Mark Johnson on the world and song.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Santa Monica, California, is Mark Johnson, Grammy-award winning music producer and founder of “Playing for Change,” a multimedia music project. Their CD/DVD is “Playing for Change: Songs Around the World.”  Mark directed and produced the documentary “Playing for Change: Peace Through Music,” which is airing on PBS this month.

And from Los Angeles we’re joined by Rocky Dawuni. Called “Ghana’s Bob Marley” by the UK’s New Nation newspaper, he debuted on the African reggae scene in 1996, and is featured in “Playing for Change” on the songs “War/No More Trouble” and “Biko.”

The Playing for Change band is on tour this fall.  Check their schedule here.

Here’s “Stand By Me,” the “Playing for Change” YouTube hit:

And here’s Bob Marley’s “War/No More Trouble” featuring Rocky Dawuni and U2’s Bono on lead vocals:

Post your comments below

The global financial crisis has focused attention on the power of unfettered free markets. But for decades now, that power has dealt a bad hand to those on the losing end of the global economy.

From the world’s poorest countries to its richest, whole populations have been battered as once secure jobs disappeared, and with them economic mobility.

Jon Jeter, former Washington Post bureau chief in southern Africa and South America, has seen globalization’s impact on the third world. And as an African-American man he’s seen the same forces undoing progress in black America.

This hour, On Point: what globalization has wrought, from South Africa to Chicago’s South Side.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jack Beatty, guest host

Guests:

Jon Jeter joins us from New York. He was The Washington Post’s bureau chief for southern Africa from 1999 to 2003, and the Post’s bureau chief for South America from 2003 to 2004. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book is “Flat Broke in the Free Market.” In a blog post at powells.com, Jeter describes what led him to write the book.

Joining us from Washington is Arvind Panagariya, professor of economics at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has worked at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. He is author of “India: The Emerging Giant.”

Zurich (Photos: Toni V / flickr.com)

Post your comments below

New surveys are out on the world’s most livable cities. The places you’d really like to be to raise a family, enjoy life, start a business, savor days and nights and, well, there’s hardly an American city in sight.

The top 25 from the Economist’s Intelligence Unit finds Vancouver, Canada at the top of the list with Vienna, Melbourne, Helsinki, Osaka close behind.

And not a single American city. Pittsburgh sneaks in at 29. Monocle magazine gives Zurich top honors. And Copenhagen, Tokyo. Only Honolulu makes it from the USA. What’s up?

This hour, On Point: livable cities, and where’s the USA?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From London we’re joined by Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief of Monocle Magazine, and “Fast Lane” columnist for the Financial Times. He headed up Monocole’s “Quality of Life 2009″ survey, which lists Zurich, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Munich, and Helsinki as the top five cities.

From Los Angeles we’re joined by Joel Kotkin, author of “The City: A Global History.” He’s currently Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, CA, and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.  He’s also a columnist for Forbes, and editor of the site newgeography.com.

And from Santa Barbara we’re joined by Pico Iyer, travel writer and author of nine books, including “Video Night in Kathmandu” and “The Global Soul.” His piece for the New York Times, “The Joy of Less,”  topped the New York Times most-emailed list last week.  His newest book, just out in paperback, is “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.”

Here’s the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2009 list, topped by Vancouver, Vienna, Melbourne, Toronto, and Perth.

Alyssa Lanz poses for a snapshot in Egypt while studying at the American University in Cairo, taking classes in Arabic and political science, and working with New Women's Foundation, a research center in Cairo focusing on women's rights. (Photo: mayafrost.com)

Post your comments below

Everybody knows the straight and narrow, up-and-out formula for American success: good grades, good scores, good college, big debt … good luck.

My guests today, Maya and Tom Frost, say forget it. There’s a better way, they say. And the path leads abroad — early.

Stay home studying for SATs and taking on college debt, and you’re guaranteed nothing in this topsy-turvy economy. Go abroad — as early as high school, especially for college, they say — and you’ll find low tuitions, big adventures, and the future.

This hour, On Point: A new American way in the world. Going global, right from the start.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Maya Frost joins us in our studio. She’s the author of “The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education.”

At Frost’s website, you can read about the students (such as Alyssa Lanz, seen in the photo above) who are featured in the book.

Also joining us in our studio is Tom Frost, husband of Maya and father of their four daughters.

Globalization in the 19th century wasn’t gentle, but it sure was exotic. Ships at mast and crews from all over. Cutlass and cannon, silk and slaves, blood and glory.

And on the fabled seas between India and China, opium. Mountains of opium. The banks of the Ganges planted for miles in poppy. The wharves of Calcutta surging with dark opium for the dens of China.

In his epic new novel “Sea of Poppies,” novelist Amitav Ghosh captures the romance, and cruelty, and wild, rough globalization of the age of opium.

This hour, On Point: Amitav Ghosh and “Sea of Poppies.”

You can join the conversation. Have you read it? Been transported to its polyglot, cultural mash-up opium days? How do you weigh the romance against the brutality of the time?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Amitav Ghosh joins us in our studio. He’s author of the novels “The Glass Palace,” “The Hungry Tide,” and most recently, “Sea of Poppies.”

Read an excerpt from “Sea of Poppies.”

Global big thinker Fareed Zakaria is out with his latest big book, and the title almost says it all: It’s “The Post-American World.”

Take a look at the world and it’s not hard to see: the world’s tallest buildings, biggest airplane, biggest investment fund, biggest movie industry, biggest refinery, biggest casino — heck, the world’s biggest ferris wheel –none of them are in the USA anymore.

So, is it all over over for Uncle Sam? Not if we play our cards right, says Zakaria.

This hour, On Point: Fareed Zakaria and the post-American world.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Fareed Zakaria, columnist and editor of Newsweek International. His new book is “The Post-American World.”

Despite all evidence, for a lot of Americans, the world — or their sense of it — and the American place in it seems frozen in about 1999. The Soviet Union — vanquished. The American economy — number one, of course. American might and influence — unchallenged. The USA — a master superpower.

Scholar Parag Khanna looks around today and sees something very different. Not just China and the EU are challenging U.S. supremacy, but also a raft of rising second-tier nations — Brazil, Turkey, Thailand, and others — coming on strong. They could be a new global swing vote.

This hour, On Point: the “Second World” challenging the “American Way.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Parag Khanna, geopolitical scholar and advisor, and author of the new book “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.”

Tugba Kalafatoglu, in Istanbul, founder of Tugba Kalafatoglu and Associates, a global management and political consulting firm.

Ricardo Lessa, in Sao Paulo, a journalist with GloboNews.

It’s a globalized world, but that doesn’t mean we all live the same. Take high school students in the U.S., China and India. Different worlds.

A new documentary takes the two million minutes of high school life and compares them — in Indiana, Shanghai and Bangalore.

It’s a little shocking to see. Bright American kids on Xbox and after-school jobs, studying almost as an afterthought. Chinese and Indian kids at the books by 5 a.m., obsessed with science and math and exams and making it. This is up-close and amazing.

This hour, On Point: High school, three ways — India, China, and the USA.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bob Compton, venture capitalist and executive producer of the documentary “Two Million Minutes.”

Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Neil Ahrendt, a freshman at Purdue University studying computer graphics, he’s one of the students featured in the documentary.

Vivek Wadhwa, a technology entrepreneur who’s founded two technology companies, he’s a fellow at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. He joins us from New Delhi, where he has been studying the education system.

One in five children in America today is a child of immigrants. And those numbers are only rising.

Yet as the immigration debate rages, the real lives of those children are too often invisible. Transplanted to a new country, they struggle to master a new language — and a new culture. Some will thrive in school. Others will drop out — or worse, end up in jail.

Now, two scholars argue that if these children don’t get the education and support they need, all Americans, not just immigrants, may pay a steep price.

Up next, On Point: Immigrant children and America’s future.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, professor of globalization and education and co-director of immigration studies at New York University, he’s co-author of “Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society.”

Carola Suarez-Orozco, co-author of “Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society,” she’s a professor of applied pyschology at New York University.

In China, pork has become so expensive they’re stealing pigs by the truckload. In Kansas, it’s wheat. In Mexico, they’ve got tortilla riots over the cost of corn. In American supermarkets, the price of milk and eggs has soared.

All over the world, the price of food is headed up. Sometimes way up. And an era of cheap food is over.

We’re turning corn into fuel, feeding meat to new millions, paying more for oil to farm — and there are consequences.

This hour, On Point: the soaring cost, globally, of what we eat — and where we’re headed with the price of food.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

John Parker, globalization correspondent for The Economist.

Bruce Babcock, professor of economics and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University.

Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains.

Lester Brown, founder and president of Earth Policy Institute and author of “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”

Behold, the humble banana. It’s not as simple as you think. Its tree is not a tree. Its fruit is a giant berry — in fact, it’s the world’s largest herb.

The banana is the planet’s biggest fruit crop, but most can’t reproduce without human intervention. Until 1876, almost no one in North America had ever seen a banana. Now, if you’re 40 years old, you’ve probably eaten ten thousand. Whole governments have risen and fallen on the banana boat trade.

Now, the banana itself is in huge trouble. The fruit on your corn flakes may not survive.

Up next, On Point: Yes, we may have no bananas.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dan Koeppel, journalist and contribuiting editor at National Geographic Adventure Magazine and author of “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.”

Adolfo Martinez, director of the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Investigation.

For decades, breast cancer was seen as an affliction of affluent women in the industrialized West. And heaven knows it is that. In the U.S., one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

But the world’s most lethal form of cancer for women is not bound by borders these days. From South America to Asia to Africa, breast cancer incidence is rising along with development. Yet detection and treatment lag far behind.

Up next, On Point: from Cleveland to Kenya and Boston to Beijing, we’ll look at the astounding reach of — and response to — breast cancer.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Kathleen Kingsbury, a correspondent for Time magazine based in Shanghai and author of this week’s cover story, “Why Breast Cancer Is Spreading Around the World”

Dr. Richard Love, an oncologist, he’s the scientific director of the International Breast Cancer Research Foundation and senior investigator researching global cancer problems for the National Cancer Institute

Dr. Peggy Porter, head of the Breast Cancer Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Mary Onyango, Executive Director of the Nairobi-based advocacy group KenyaBreast, and herself a breast cancer survivor.