I have sat in Bhagwati's classes and believe he is honest.
He's also very critical of the U.S. use of the WTO to tighten intellectual property restrictions and of the confusion of capital account liberalization with trade liberalization. He's not a wind-up free-trader.
When Liza Featherstone & I interviewed him for our Lingua Franca piece about trade (the mag is dead, but the piece has been perserved at <http://www.1worldcommunication.org/clothesencounter.htm>), we found him far more open-minded, intellectually engaged, and culturally literate than just about any other economist we've ever encountered.
Doug
