T. Belman. I posted this article because it was thought provoking. The issue is not what economic nationalism means but what does Bannon mean when he self describes himself as such. I have always accepted the loss of American jobs and industries as the inevitable result of worldwide competition and technological advances. We couldn’t compete with countries that had very low labour costs and low environmental concerns. The upside was that consumer goods became cheaper. This process will continue as the world becomes more digitalized and turns increasingly to robotics to replace labour.
Can Bannon restore manufacturing jobs to the rust belt and if so at what cost. Will these jobs be created at the expense of the American consumer.
Trump’s Neo-Nationalists. ‘America first’ is not a policy or a motto. It’s an implicit accusation of disloyalty.
“I’m an economic nationalist. I am an America first guy. And I have admired nationalist movements throughout the world, have said repeatedly strong nations make great neighbors. I’ve also said repeatedly that the ethno-nationalist movement, prominent in Europe, will change over time. I’ve never been a supporter of ethno-nationalism.”
So said Stephen K. Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief strategist, in a wide-ranging interview with my colleague Kimberley Strassel published in these pages on Saturday. Later in the interview Mr. Bannon inveighed against “the policies of globalism,” which, he said, had “severely hurt” the interests of America’s working and middle classes of every race.
Over the weekend, several friends told me they found the interview reassuring about Mr. Bannon. I found it chilling.
Start with economic nationalism, a shopworn idea commonly associated with Latin American governments such as Juan Perón’s Argentina. In its milder form, economic nationalism means state subsidies for national-champion companies, giant infrastructure projects, targeted tariff protections for politically favored industries, “Buy American” provisions in government contracting, federal interventions against foreign takeovers of “sensitive” companies.
The U.S. already does much of this on a bipartisan basis, so let’s assume that Mr. Bannon’s notion of “economic nationalism” doesn’t end by demanding that federal workers drive American cars. What else might it mean?
In France, it has meant bailouts for failing industrial giants like Alstom. In Japan, it has meant 800% tariffs on imported rice, decades of blowout spending on airports, roads and bridges, and chronic hostility to immigration. Russia passed more protectionist measures in 2013 than any other country, according to the Moscow Times.
What do these and other countries that practice variants of economic nationalism have in common? France, where the state accounts for 57% of the economy, hasn’t seen annual GDP growth top 3% since the turn of the millennium. Japan, which has the world’s oldest population along with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio, experienced no fewer than five recessions between 2008 and 2015. Russia’s GDP contracted by 40% between 2013 and 2015. Its economy is now half the size of Great Britain’s.
Economic nationalism, in other words, means economic ruin—along with all the political favoritism, crony capitalism and inefficiency that Americans usually associate with Solyndra, the Synfuels Corp., or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Mr. Bannon wants to double down on this winning formula.
Mr. Bannon also says he’s “America first,” which—see if you can spot the difference—either is or isn’t “America First.” Either way, the animating impulse behind “America first” is that there are some Americans who put their country second, or last, presumably behind their ethnic loyalties, ideological affinities or economic interests. America first isn’t a policy program or a political motto so much as it is an accusation of disloyalty. What real American, after all, wouldn’t put “America first” in his political priorities?
Mr. Bannon’s answer, along with that of the alt-right movement he has proudly championed through his Breitbart website, is “the globalists.” The globalists are supposed to be the bankers at Goldman Sachs who paid Mrs. Clinton her handsome speaking fees. They are editorial writers at this newspaper, who champion the virtues of free trade and a liberal immigration policy. They are the “warmongers” demanding sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine.
But the truth is that Wall Street bankers, recently naturalized immigrants and even mainstream journalists have as much right to advocate a view of the American interest as Mr. Bannon and his fellow travelers. That’s the American way, which disavows traditional concepts of nationalism in favor of a broader ideal of citizenship—identity defined primarily by participation and aspiration, not ancestry. Nationalism may be a fine idea for Japan or Iceland. America is exceptional because it’s built on a different premise.
As for Mr. Bannon’s admiration for nationalist movements, that might explain the odd way in which Breitbart has deployed anti-Semitic tropes to denounce “globalist” Jewish writers such as the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum while being stalwart in its support for Israel. Whatever the case, the distinction between nationalism and ethno-nationalism is a slippery one.
As my colleague Bari Weiss pointed out in a recent article in Tablet, the foremost figure of today’s alt-right, Richard Spencer, dreams of “a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans. It would be a new society based on very different ideals than, say, the Declaration of Independence.” Mr. Spencer’s vision may not be Mr. Bannon’s. But the newfound political power of the latter will inevitably open channels for the former.
In “The Second Coming,” Yeats asked, “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” The answer, it may yet turn out, is the likes of Steve Bannon and his ugly litter of neo-nationalists.
When I re-read this article, I realize the whole thing is based on logical fallacies, bait and switch, attacking a straw man.
Crony Capitalism, bailouts of failed mammoth businesses? That was Obama. Bringing in identity politics by equating foreign Corporations with naturalized citizens thus trying to make the argument that to be for our own economy is racist?
This article is intellectually dishonest, deliberately obfuscatory propaganda. The author makes no serious arguments. It doesn’t merit re-publication or debate. If I were grading it in a class, I would give it an F and make the student re-do it. In fact, it shows such a malicious disregard for the truth that I might not let the student re-do it for a better grade.
In my previous response, I made the mistake of reading the article as though he were arguing against the actual economic nationalism of Bannon with legitimate arguments, not this made up nonsense. Mea Culpa. My bad. I misread.
As I read him Stephen’s is calling for ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FOLLOWED BY AMNESTIES
It doesn’t matter if prices are higher, if wages keep pace. Moreover, competition will bring prices down at a certain point, anyway. When supply outstrips demand, prices go down so it will all even out in the wash. Plus, new industries will develop.
The rust belt of Reagan’s day became Silicon Valleys.
That’s one of the reasons that the Marxist eschatology of class society giving way to communism or classless society as scarcity is eliminated doesn’t work. As the forces of production develop, consumer demands also develop and what was considered enough yesterday will not be considered enough tomorrow. It’s all relative.
Ironically, it was American Corporations that actually did most of the work of developing Soviet Industry in the ’20s and ’30s. And they would have lost WWII without our lend-lease program — Britain and the pilots from what is now the EU, too.
Ungrateful bastards.
‘Let us take a look at a statement made by Stalin to Ambassador Averell Harriman. This is what Harriman told the State Department that Stalin said to him: “About two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union had been built with United States help or technical assistance.”
El Norte clip 2
https://youtu.be/uXh_xpOmquw
“‘Let us take a look at a statement made by Stalin to Ambassador Averell Harriman. This is what Harriman told the State Department that Stalin said to him: “About two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union had been built with United States help or technical assistance.'”
http://ashbrook.org/programs/citizens/publications/books/no-left-turns-contents/soviet-might/
@ keelie:
Yes, and an overly broad view of citizenship. Since when are all international clients, citizens?
@ Birdalone:
I think this is where a lot of the trouble began:
“The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard.
FDR takes United States off gold standard – Jun 05, 1933 – HISTORY …
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united-states-off-gold-standard“
Loss of US manufacturing jobs since 1978 is far more complex than Bret Stephens can understand.
By 1978, the Wall St paradigm of quarter to quarter earnings gains was so distorted by the Fed’s high interest rate response to 1973-75 inflation that manufacturing “was no longer profitable enough”, and so the once DJIA-American Can started the leveraged buyout fad that enriched Wall St, and continues to do so. American Can did transform itself into Citigroup. Some of the spun-off assets were so burdened with unpayable debt that they were shut down, by Wall St mavens, in the 1990s.
The loss of one million manufacturing jobs to CANADA after NAFTA was due to lower unit labor cost because the USA still links medical insurance to employment. (No one talking about this in 2016)
In 1997, the bleached pulp industry moved offshore rather than deal with dioxin as a byproduct of chlorine bleaching. Many other industries faced other high compliance costs by offshoring – yet our trade agreements never enforce the ‘level playing field on environmental regulation’.
Bret Stephens needs to move to the central Bronx to better understand what a Sanctuary City really means. Legal immigration is NOT the same as Open Borders for New Voters.
Sorry, used to think Stephens actually had a brain. Zombie alert! All he understands are the Labels, words, not reality. Bannon knows reality, outside the Bubble Dome.
People like Stevens have a very narrow view of what “Economic Nationalism” is. And they illustrate what it seems to mean by looking at countries other than the US, where in the latter case, it is quite obvious that manufacturing has been gutted in favour of outsourcing.
Furthermore, although they detest what they consider to be the only definition of economic nationalism, they don’t appear to have an answer to the question, “How can we put America back to work?”
The truth is, based on my experience in manufacturing, that the US government has to rid itself of the various distortions in the economy – at a federal or state level, or both – by firstly taking a look at taxation of manufacturing entities. Then the government, or perhaps one of the many independent economic research entities, has to determine the other principle (real) reasons for companies abandoning their US-based manufacturing operations in favour of outsourcing.
We, including Stevens et al, make too many assumptions when it comes to discussing so-called economic nationalism. Manufacturing operations are extremely complex, and the ultimate pricing of goods is dependent on the best choice of a wide variety of manufacturing paradigms. Such pricing is not based exclusively on high labour costs.
The American situation is NOT the same as the French or Japanese situations, so it must be dealt with in its own unique way.