One of the greatest tragedies of my lifetime has been watching as the idea of free trade, which has built the immense wealth we enjoy today in the west, come to be rejected by both major parties. What makes it even more painful, is that we literally won the fight! Clinton, Blair et al conceded free trade was good! Everyone was onboard! And yet a mere 30 years later and both parties have traded away free trade so we can’t they about the literal dumbest culture war BS.
>All they see is Miller talking about how amazing it will be for South Carolina to tumble backward to a more primitive state of development.<
What the MAGA faithful really see is a return to an era when a high school education got you a decent factory job with which you could support a family and buy a house (They don't know the houses were small, drafty in winter and sweltering in summer—mostly because they weren't alive back then). I think they also tend to believe turning back the clock on the economy will somehow go hand in hand with restoring 1954's social conditions and cultural practices.
All throat clearing about how Trump is worse than Biden aside, Biden preferencing union contractors and made-in-America provisions is just different in degree rather than in kind, right?
I really wish there was a party that Believed the Science on free trade.
What is particularly striking is how many Americans say they pay too many Federal Income tax is the same share of the population that roughly paid any Federal Income tax for the 2022 tax year. I will say that most Americans reflexively oppose paying taxes even when their tax burdens are relatively modest. It's always someone else's civic responsibility that government services get provided. Sigh.
My favorite line by a mainstream journalist was Matt pointing out that one of the overriding problems with Donald Trump was that “as a human being, he is a piece of shit”. I add this observation from today’s post: “ Unless it benefits him personally, Trump just pulls ideas out of his ass because he likes the vibe.” Two basic truisms that explain the descent of the GOP and this country more generally.
I'd also like to see more people talking about Project 2025's proposal to eliminate the Fed's dual mandate, focusing only on price stability and eliminating the full employment mandate. They say it's to reduce inflation, but we know it's to lower wages for their corporate donors. I could see this gaining traction in right-wing media because it's a fun conspiracy that they like.
And what's going to happen to grocery prices when Trump throws half of our agricultural workforce into relocation camps?
There's a reason they prefer to talk about trans folks ...
I'd be more interested in discussing- should the US & Europe be tariffing this latest wave of Chinese exports in solar panels, electric cars, and batteries? Because (as much as this breaks libertarian brains) they're all the product of very very extensive state support/industrial policy, sometimes to the extent of enabling producers to sell abroad below their manufacturing cost. This is a deliberate industrial policy on the Chinese part to drive Western competitors in these 3 industries out of business so that they can dominate.
Isn't this just dumping? Should the West respond with tariffs? (I'm kinda leaning yeah, I have to say). More broadly, how should the West deal with a gigantic wealthy non-market competitor who spends billions on propping up state champions? More amusingly, will libertarians like Scott Linciome and the Cato Institute suffer a critical reactor meltdown when they realize successful cutting-edge industries can be fostered by competent industrial policy? (Just kidding, they'll never admit they're wrong). China is literally technologically ahead of the US & Europe in solar panels, electric cars, and batteries due to state investment
It’s pretty remarkable to me how basically none of this stuff is part of the general discourse. The fact that it’s all “border, border, border” is actually a sign to me that not only is to Trump going to win, but he really is going to win a pretty big landslide. Because this tariff stuff as far as I can tell is a pretty big centerpiece of Trump’s campaign and yet it is barely a whisper in the news.
And I say Trump is going to win because it’s pretty clear to me due to changes that have occurred in news media just in the last 4 years (see media layoffs), conservative media sets the agenda for what gets “front page” news coverage in a way that’s even strong than it was 5-10 years ago. This just really crystallized for me with the Claudine Gay stuff in December. Because the next 8 months is going to be front page after front page in the New York Post and story after story in Fox News about some crime a brown person committed. Or just video of some non white person doing something violent. Whether any of them are illegal immigrants or not is irrelevant. But the tragedy will be how much that will impact MSM of the campaign and THAT my friends is how Trump wins “bigly”. Because as Ezra Klein noted years ago, the actual details of policy don’t matter for elections. It’s what policies at all are highlighted. If an election is about greedy corporations and health care, it’s to the Dems benefit. If an election is about crime and immigration it’s to the the GOP’s benefit. If you don’t think Trump and GOP is going to tout how Biden did nothing on the border despite being the ones who are going to kill this border bill I have a bridge to sell you.
We all agreed that those leftist weirdos were stupid when they talked about how awful it was that Americans can easily get bananas in January and for some reason it gets glossed over that this is basically Trump's trade policy.
(This may also, in an odd way, explain why the far left is seemingly willing to let Trump win to punish Biden for not following their stupid pro-Hamas agenda.)
I’m old enough to remember when popular culture depicted low-value factory work as soul-crushing and something people went to great lengths to escape. “Officer and a Gentleman” was just one of many popular culture pieces that carried this theme. It resonated with people because it was fundamentally true. Now the plan is to return the citizenry to that awful time and place?
Reminds me of what Tyler Cowhen called the great forgetting. I’m not quite sure why so many people can’t imagine themselves evolving into the kinds of people the economy rewards and so I feel somewhat adrift on this topic.
It makes politics clearer for me in a way that seems bad.
The mention of Hawaiian coffee planters also makes me think of a long term threat of this policy: entrenching more rent seekers via government policy. As we know so well with existing rent seekers, they will fight tooth and nail to keep their rent seeking codified so they can continue to rent seek. It could be a hell of a fight to undo these tariffs once they're in place.
It's all just so out of date. It brings back old memories of 'Cletus Safaris' from 2016 when journalists would go around interviewing some old guys complaining about the local factory getting shut down. These days, who isn't being employed because of foreign competition? It's as if Americans want some dreary socialist economy producing low added value crap, as long as they get some guaranteed job they can pretend to work at.
I confess I felt a fear that it would step into the trap of saying, "I believe this is important and would be a winning issue for the Democrats if only they put it front and center and clearly explained it to the American people." It tiptoed around that but didn't go all in, for which I'm grateful.
There are a million things the Democrats can go after Trump and the Republicans about. Most of them are vital and, if the voters truly understood them, would build support for the Democrats. But they won't understand them because that's not the way politics works.
There are two key elements in communications during a political campaign: salience and breaking through the noise. You have to make an issue truly salient to voters somehow -- it has to grab their attention; they have to care about it. And you have to break through the noise of a million things going on in the political environment. You do it through brain-breaking repetition; you do it by simplifying it enough for people to get it instantly.
And ultimately, there's the "rule of three" (which I coined just now): you have to be prepared to highlight three, and only three, major arguments against your opponents, and have the discipline to hit those constantly and to downplay, if not ignore, everything else.
If we were to decide that tariffs is one of the Big Three, which one would we drop? Abortion? Threat to democracy? A booming economy? The spectacular narcissism of Trump?
Explain to me again just why the Clinton budget surplus high growth neo liberal economy was so terrible that we had to replace it with deficits and trade restrictions?
One of the greatest tragedies of my lifetime has been watching as the idea of free trade, which has built the immense wealth we enjoy today in the west, come to be rejected by both major parties. What makes it even more painful, is that we literally won the fight! Clinton, Blair et al conceded free trade was good! Everyone was onboard! And yet a mere 30 years later and both parties have traded away free trade so we can’t they about the literal dumbest culture war BS.
>All they see is Miller talking about how amazing it will be for South Carolina to tumble backward to a more primitive state of development.<
What the MAGA faithful really see is a return to an era when a high school education got you a decent factory job with which you could support a family and buy a house (They don't know the houses were small, drafty in winter and sweltering in summer—mostly because they weren't alive back then). I think they also tend to believe turning back the clock on the economy will somehow go hand in hand with restoring 1954's social conditions and cultural practices.
All throat clearing about how Trump is worse than Biden aside, Biden preferencing union contractors and made-in-America provisions is just different in degree rather than in kind, right?
I really wish there was a party that Believed the Science on free trade.
What is particularly striking is how many Americans say they pay too many Federal Income tax is the same share of the population that roughly paid any Federal Income tax for the 2022 tax year. I will say that most Americans reflexively oppose paying taxes even when their tax burdens are relatively modest. It's always someone else's civic responsibility that government services get provided. Sigh.
My favorite line by a mainstream journalist was Matt pointing out that one of the overriding problems with Donald Trump was that “as a human being, he is a piece of shit”. I add this observation from today’s post: “ Unless it benefits him personally, Trump just pulls ideas out of his ass because he likes the vibe.” Two basic truisms that explain the descent of the GOP and this country more generally.
Matt's right, and Dems should not concede this issue.
Here in Ohio, the Republicans are talking about eliminating the income tax (presumably) in favor of hiking the sales tax. That's a straightforward tax cut for the rich and tax hike on the poor and middle class. I can't wait until seniors with fixed incomes hear about it. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/2024/01/23/ohio-republicans-propose-eliminating-state-income-tax-business-tax/72285903007/
I'd also like to see more people talking about Project 2025's proposal to eliminate the Fed's dual mandate, focusing only on price stability and eliminating the full employment mandate. They say it's to reduce inflation, but we know it's to lower wages for their corporate donors. I could see this gaining traction in right-wing media because it's a fun conspiracy that they like.
And what's going to happen to grocery prices when Trump throws half of our agricultural workforce into relocation camps?
There's a reason they prefer to talk about trans folks ...
I'd be more interested in discussing- should the US & Europe be tariffing this latest wave of Chinese exports in solar panels, electric cars, and batteries? Because (as much as this breaks libertarian brains) they're all the product of very very extensive state support/industrial policy, sometimes to the extent of enabling producers to sell abroad below their manufacturing cost. This is a deliberate industrial policy on the Chinese part to drive Western competitors in these 3 industries out of business so that they can dominate.
Isn't this just dumping? Should the West respond with tariffs? (I'm kinda leaning yeah, I have to say). More broadly, how should the West deal with a gigantic wealthy non-market competitor who spends billions on propping up state champions? More amusingly, will libertarians like Scott Linciome and the Cato Institute suffer a critical reactor meltdown when they realize successful cutting-edge industries can be fostered by competent industrial policy? (Just kidding, they'll never admit they're wrong). China is literally technologically ahead of the US & Europe in solar panels, electric cars, and batteries due to state investment
It’s pretty remarkable to me how basically none of this stuff is part of the general discourse. The fact that it’s all “border, border, border” is actually a sign to me that not only is to Trump going to win, but he really is going to win a pretty big landslide. Because this tariff stuff as far as I can tell is a pretty big centerpiece of Trump’s campaign and yet it is barely a whisper in the news.
And I say Trump is going to win because it’s pretty clear to me due to changes that have occurred in news media just in the last 4 years (see media layoffs), conservative media sets the agenda for what gets “front page” news coverage in a way that’s even strong than it was 5-10 years ago. This just really crystallized for me with the Claudine Gay stuff in December. Because the next 8 months is going to be front page after front page in the New York Post and story after story in Fox News about some crime a brown person committed. Or just video of some non white person doing something violent. Whether any of them are illegal immigrants or not is irrelevant. But the tragedy will be how much that will impact MSM of the campaign and THAT my friends is how Trump wins “bigly”. Because as Ezra Klein noted years ago, the actual details of policy don’t matter for elections. It’s what policies at all are highlighted. If an election is about greedy corporations and health care, it’s to the Dems benefit. If an election is about crime and immigration it’s to the the GOP’s benefit. If you don’t think Trump and GOP is going to tout how Biden did nothing on the border despite being the ones who are going to kill this border bill I have a bridge to sell you.
We all agreed that those leftist weirdos were stupid when they talked about how awful it was that Americans can easily get bananas in January and for some reason it gets glossed over that this is basically Trump's trade policy.
(This may also, in an odd way, explain why the far left is seemingly willing to let Trump win to punish Biden for not following their stupid pro-Hamas agenda.)
I’m old enough to remember when popular culture depicted low-value factory work as soul-crushing and something people went to great lengths to escape. “Officer and a Gentleman” was just one of many popular culture pieces that carried this theme. It resonated with people because it was fundamentally true. Now the plan is to return the citizenry to that awful time and place?
Reminds me of what Tyler Cowhen called the great forgetting. I’m not quite sure why so many people can’t imagine themselves evolving into the kinds of people the economy rewards and so I feel somewhat adrift on this topic.
It makes politics clearer for me in a way that seems bad.
The mention of Hawaiian coffee planters also makes me think of a long term threat of this policy: entrenching more rent seekers via government policy. As we know so well with existing rent seekers, they will fight tooth and nail to keep their rent seeking codified so they can continue to rent seek. It could be a hell of a fight to undo these tariffs once they're in place.
It's all just so out of date. It brings back old memories of 'Cletus Safaris' from 2016 when journalists would go around interviewing some old guys complaining about the local factory getting shut down. These days, who isn't being employed because of foreign competition? It's as if Americans want some dreary socialist economy producing low added value crap, as long as they get some guaranteed job they can pretend to work at.
Good post; expertly written and well laid out.
I confess I felt a fear that it would step into the trap of saying, "I believe this is important and would be a winning issue for the Democrats if only they put it front and center and clearly explained it to the American people." It tiptoed around that but didn't go all in, for which I'm grateful.
There are a million things the Democrats can go after Trump and the Republicans about. Most of them are vital and, if the voters truly understood them, would build support for the Democrats. But they won't understand them because that's not the way politics works.
There are two key elements in communications during a political campaign: salience and breaking through the noise. You have to make an issue truly salient to voters somehow -- it has to grab their attention; they have to care about it. And you have to break through the noise of a million things going on in the political environment. You do it through brain-breaking repetition; you do it by simplifying it enough for people to get it instantly.
And ultimately, there's the "rule of three" (which I coined just now): you have to be prepared to highlight three, and only three, major arguments against your opponents, and have the discipline to hit those constantly and to downplay, if not ignore, everything else.
If we were to decide that tariffs is one of the Big Three, which one would we drop? Abortion? Threat to democracy? A booming economy? The spectacular narcissism of Trump?
Explain to me again just why the Clinton budget surplus high growth neo liberal economy was so terrible that we had to replace it with deficits and trade restrictions?
This article rules