Progressive trade thinkers do not see U.S. trade relationships as a mechanism to benefit Americans, they see it as a mechanism to benefit the global poor. This is a serious conceptual flaw and a hangover of the 'affluence' philosophy that no longer aligns with reality.
In 1945, American strategists recognized that a nation with half the capital stock of humanity had to rebuild the world. But we are not in that era anymore. It is not our job to fix the world.
Export-oriented growth means displacing the remaining Americans who produce things. It cannot work anymore. There's no other country with a giant trade deficit, by design. No one else will serve as the importer of last resort.
The progressive internationalist left, like @toddntucker, @rodrikdani, and so forth, are too focused on giving away what's left of American productive capacity. We have a domestic crisis. We have to transition into trade balance and self-sufficiency.
@toddntucker@rodrikdani There's a widespread global belief that the U.S. has profited from our global posture. Though some segments of our elite have, we have not. It's largely a transnational elite class that did well, and a lot of the global poor. America is a desperate nation. The party's over.
@toddntucker@rodrikdani The American era of hegemony from World War II onward was a remarkable success, an era that for the vast majority was an era of peace and prosperity. But it is over. It's not that Americans cannot pay, it's that we have said we will not pay.
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1. Want some fun news before the Monday inauguration that you won't have heard anywhere else? The antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over. Here's just part of what they did.
2. The FTC filed a monopolization claim against agricultural machine maker John Deere for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment, a suit which Wired magazine calls a “tipping point” for the right to repair movement.
3. They also released another report on pharmacy benefit managers, including that of UnitedHealth Group, showing that these companies inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion.
There’s a nontrivial chance that Trump’s new term is the actual catastrophe that liberals imagined his first one would be. I don’t mean authoritarian, I mean economic, military and social collapse.
Here's why I think there's a nontrivial chance of a serious dislocation under Trump. It's not because of him, per se, but structural things he won't fix.
Here are a few. The U.S. net international investment position is negative $23 trillion and sinking rapidly. That's crazy.
That doesn't mean the U.S. will go 'bankrupt,' that concept can't apply to nations. It means the U.S. is trading our entire productive capacity for finance. For instance, we're now a net food importer by value. What? Our farmland is awesome. And yet...
There's something off about all of the post-election recriminations among Democrats. It's not that any of the theories are wrong, it's that none of these pontificators actually know how to make government do anything.
Like, sure, use different language if you think that matters. The bottom line is Obama said you can keep your doctor and health costs would go down and that didn't happen and most Dems don't seem remotely curious why that is.
There are a few people in Biden-world who did CHIPS stuff, there's some export control people, there are some anti-monopolists, but that's sort of it for Democrats who have actually done anything with power.
1. You learn a lot about politicians when the spotlight is not on them. So I want to offer an observation about something Kamala just did - a quiet and almost wholly unnoticed favor to big business and Mitch McConnell - suggesting she would have been a problematic President.🧵
2. In late November, after the election, the Biden White House nominated two people for something called the International Trade Commission. The ITC is the body designed to address cheating by foreign companies who dump products to destroy US producers.
3. The ITC is one of those places where free traders have run the roost for decades, crushing industry after industry by refusing to uphold anti-dumping law. It's also a place that few in D.C. care about. Domestic producers? Pffeh, who cares about steel and mattress imports?
1. This is a useful response in terms of how to understand the Abundance theory of politics. Yglesias is making a *policy* argument about private equity. It's not bad! It depends! We have to be nuanced! Ok, that's true. So what's the problem?
2. People increasingly hear 'private equity' and associate it with pillaging. It's not always true; KKR has done a great job with Simon & Schuster. But it's often true. So demonizing private equity is like demonizing Wall Street - it's a symbol of a society with haves/have nots.
3. That's the *political* story that populists like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump tell. It's a true political story, private equity billionaires are doing horrific things and corrupting politics. We all know that's true. But anti-populists don't like that political story.
1. There's a fascinating dynamic among Trumpy venture capitalists trying to manipulate the right-wing for their own purposes. For example, here's vc Marc Andreesen saying the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau forces conservatives to lose their bank accounts.
2. Andreesen says the CFPB 'terrorizes' financial institutions and denies them access to the banking system, and says it is going after conservatives. But is that true? Well, as @dorajfacundo points out, the CFPB is doing the opposite.