Cass is intellectually dishonest though by conflating NAFTA with China into the WTO. NAFTA was great for American manufacturing and he’s implying that Lawrence somehow manipulated the Bush administration into doing nothing as we hemorrhaged jobs to China which is absurd.
Bush believed making China great again was good for America and unfortunately he used his over 80% approval rating to steamroll everyone with economic and foreign policy. And remember in 2008 Bush’s last foreign trip was a victory lap at the Beijing Olympics…Bush made China great again by shipping working class jobs to China and shipping the sons and daughters of the working class to Iraq and Afghanistan.
NAFTA was not great for American manufacturing. Maybe for the corporations that reaped the monetary rewards, but certainly not for the thousands and thousands of Americans who lost their well-paying jobs and had extremely limited opportunities to find new jobs at comparative wages.
That Trade Assistance program for displaced workers turned out to be a boondoggle that hardly assisted anyone. Robert Reich, US Secretary of Labor at the time NAFTA was passed, believed that the TAA was vastly underfunded, and that not enough consideration was given to how to help the trade losers.
As far as China, President Clinton played a huge role in paving the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization. He and others sincerely believed that allowing China entry into the WTO would result in China becoming more of a democracy. Suffice to say, that’s not how it turned out.
The negotiated WTO rules allowed for the use of tariffs on China if it was determined that China was playing unfairly. China was clearly manipulating its currency to make its products more attractive to overseas markets, but Bush did not want to impose tariffs for fear of rising prices and political backlash. Tariffs could have helped at that time.
Later, when Biden did use tariffs to protect American industries, he was criticized by many economists and even some in his own administration for inviting higher prices.
We have actual data that shows manufacturing jobs increased after NAFTA and Detroit metro actually added population (a proxy for manufacturing health) through Clinton’s presidency. Most people conflate China into the WTO with NAFTA…but China into the WTO was in December 2001…and 2002 is when we started hemorrhaging jobs to China. Clinton left office with more manufacturing jobs than he started with and the notion Clinton was so all powerful that 12 years of globalist Bushes are rendered meaningless is absurd. And one of the most common mistakes people make is saying Clinton was president in December 2001 when he hadn’t been president for almost a year. Also if you remember the 1990s oil was cheap and Mexico and Canada are petrostates of varying degrees and so both their currencies declined relative to the dollar which was a big part of the trade situation at the same time as NAFTA
Anyway, I know a lot more than you and the notion the underwear factories (which is what we lost to Mexico after NAFTA) in some of the most poverty stricken communities in the Carolinas was some great loss is equally absurd as the other “facts” you believe you know! 😉
This is one of a number of articles detailing how terrible NAFTA has been to the American worker. It was written by Jeff Faux, founder of the respected Economic Policy Institute. Hope you can find time to read it. Remember, NAFTA set the template for the World Trade Organization, which China was allowed to join. Then came the "China Shock."
NAFTA, Twenty Years After: A Disaster
by Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute
"Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring “good-paying American jobs,” a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Instead, NAFTA directly cost the United States. a net loss of 700,000 jobs. The surplus with Mexico turned into a chronic deficit. And the economic dislocation in Mexico increased the the flow of undocumented workers into the United States.
"The agreements traded away the interests of American workers in favor of the interests of American corporations eager to produce for the U.S. market in countries where labor is cheap, environment and public health regulations weak, and governments easily bribable.
"Among other things, NAFTA granted corporations extraordinary legal protections against national labor and environmental laws that that they could claim threatened future profits. At the same time, workers and unions were denied the legal status needed to defend themselves in these new cross-border jurisdictions."
The Clinton economy boomed after NAFTA and specifically we added manufacturing jobs and Detroit metro gained population. Any data that shows NAFTA cost jobs is irrelevant because it was more likely the exchange rates with Mexico and Canada that cost jobs in a economic climate in which the American job market was very strong across the board. Contrast that job market with the very strange “jobless recovery” after the 2001 very mild recession. So just forget everything you learned about NAFTA and focus on the 2002-2003 jobless recovery and then the 2005-2008 elevated CPI and you will know more economic history than 99% of Americans.
Also, yes, Clinton was not president when China's entry into the WTO was granted in late 2001, but he had much influence and his NAFTA set the blueprint for the World Trade Organization.
This is the draft of an article I wrote about the harm caused by NAFTA for the Hispanic newspaper, El Obervador, located in San Jose, CA. It was published, and I tried looking for an online copy, but I couldn't find an archive on their website where it can be found. It was published in 2015 as "The HIgh Cost of Free Trade."
"Mexican and American workers have paid a high price for free trade. The 1995 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which broke down tariff and regulatory trade barriers between Mexico, the United States and Canada, has led to lost jobs and low wages, as well as increased immigration to the US by Mexicans who lost their livelihood due to NAFTA policies. NAFTA has caused a lot of suffering for many people.
'Let’s start with Mexico. Small-scale, single-family Mexican farmers have long grown corn as a means to provide for themselves and their families, selling enough to get by until the next harvest. However, NAFTA allowed large-sized, corporate American farmers, who benefitted from huge monetary subsidies from the American government, to sell corn in Mexico at a price below what it costs to grow corn in Mexico.
'Mexican farmers could not compete with the lower-priced American corn, and found themselves without a means to earn money. They had few, if any, opportunities in Mexico, and many left for the United States to look for work. Immigration to America increased dramatically after the implementation of NAFTA.
'In 1990, several years before NAFTA, approximately 4.5 million Mexican-born people lived in the United States. Currently, as stated by the PEW Hispanic Research Center, there are approximately 11.5 million. The state of Oaxaca was hit especially hard. According to the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants, there are now 500,000 Oaxacans living in the United States, 300,000 in California alone.
'Oaxacans have held rallies centered on “The Right to Stay Home,” where impassioned speeches were given and the phrase, “El derecho de no migrar (the right to not migrate)” was shouted over and over again in Spanish, and in the indigenous languages of Mixteco and Triqui, as many indigenous communities were affected.
'A 2005 study by the World Bank, commissioned by the Mexican government, found that the extreme rural poverty rate of 37% prior to NAFTA in 1992-4, jumped to about 52% in 1996-8 after NAFTA took effect. This was due, the report said, “mainly by the 1995 economic crisis, the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant wages, and falling agricultural prices.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages have fallen throughout Mexico. A minimum wage earner in Mexico today is able to buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than on the day that NAFTA took effect.
'Things also haven’t been rosy on the American side of the border. According to Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and other institutes, about 1 million American workers (which includes many Mexican-Americans), lost their livelihoods due to corporations moving their factories to Mexico to take advantage of the lower wages. These displaced American workers spend a long time unemployed, and when they do find another job, it is often at lower wages.
'Many American corporations now use the very real threat of moving to Mexico when faced with demands for higher wages and better benefits. As the New York Times notes, the downfall of manufacturing is a major reason for the widening income gap between the rich and the rest of us. Corporations and investors like free trade because it increases their profits, as they can sell their products, which are made at low cost, in areas where incomes and wages are high.
'The US is now engaged in negotiations for another free trade treaty called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This has been called “NAFTA on steroids” and involves twelve countries: the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
'President Obama is in favor of it, but many liberal Democrats and economists have spoken out against it. These include the fiery progressives Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the outspoken economists Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich and Paul Krugman.
We should listen to them. The Trans-Pacific Partnership promises more suffering for the American and Mexican worker, and more riches for the already rich. Enough already!
It doesn't matter. The isolationists control the entire federal government, again. The free trade crowd was kicked out of the party years ago. It's time to man up and take responsibility. The backward looking grievance has become boring.
Adam Smith knew that there is no such thing as pure economics in the real world. There was and always will be only political economy. The economists of twentieth century, especially after the fall of Soviet Union, forgot about the political part and fell for the lunacy of pure economics. It's just like open borders for the sake of universal human rights. It was utterly insane.
That’s incorrect. We’ve added manufacturing jobs since 2010 and Biden accelerated the adding of manufacturing jobs and yet the people that were most vocal about wanting more manufacturing jobs voted for the party that shipped the jobs to China. So the problem is the right wing echo chamber pushing false narratives that confuse Americans into voting against their economic interests.
That’s what Cass is doing. I don’t care about partisanship….Bush was an awful president that did awful things that’s just reality. Trump’s first term featured Bush retreads and it wasn’t as awful because at least Trump figured it out eventually.
I agreed that GWB screwed up big time, thanks in part to advices from the Harvard economists on this panel. I also agree that Trump made and is making plenty of mistakes. But I think it’s lunacy to claim that Biden made better economic policies than Trump did.
If you understand what happened in 2020 with $250 billion in PPP fraud and then unfortunately Republicans rejected the vaccine in 2021 and then the crazy weather events in TX/Louisiana starting in August 2020 then that is the reason for the difference in inflation between America and EU prior to Putin invading Ukraine.
"Free trade" and from the people who say there is no free lunch? What?
Your republican party I would join!
The university = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
Katherine and Oren, spot on thank you both for your intelligence and mostly intellectual honesty. You're the type people we need to take us into the future.
His legacy is forever lashed to Don, the father of the “new” right. He knowingly bought the Don ticket, along with his shapeshifter bud JD. Now he’s takin the ride:).
And, why doesn’t DonOrenomics entail taking the taco tariffs to the supine Congress for approval? To achieve the manufacturing renaissance we’ve been promised, shouldn’t they be permanent? Maybe that would help reverse the manufacturing employment declines we experienced in Don’s first year?
We all have a choice to make, especially elites with a platform. Like Oren, I've made mine.
My post doesn't remotely compare to our president's online presence. But, his would seem to matter more? Try reading his daily bleats-every word, every day. Then ruminate on the fact the loon has his finger on the button.
Hi Oren, thanks for your post and wanted to add that I followed Katherine Tai throughout her tenure as US Trade Representative under the Biden administration. She is excellent and had the strength and courage to stand up to those who wanted Biden to remove the tariffs placed on China. I was even thinking that the Trump administration would benefit from her inclusion on his economic and trade team. They would benefit from your inclusion as well.
Anything China chooses to invest in using public funds lowers the expected rate of return for competitors reliant on financial markets.
This has helped drive Wall Street from investing in productive assets to various forms of grift - buying and selling assets simply to make money on the transaction. Selling the Industrial Midwest - the Rust Belt- off to the highest bidder.
Debating Larry Summers and criticizing Wall Street are unlikely to change anything. And using tariffs as a means of increasing the expected rate of return on domestic investments, will not change the underlying “financialization” investment culture.
I would suggest that the New Conservatives should seek common ground with the Post-Neoliberals to develop and implement policies that vastly expand publicly managed sources of venture capital all the way from the Federal government all the way down to county government.
Essentially creating a public counterpart to Wall Street and private capital, which is what is working for China.
For example, here in Pittsburgh the Federal government has been inserted itself into the relationship between Nippon Steel and US Steel. US Steel’s management culture has been dominated by financial interests since JP Morgan bought out Carnegie.
From this clip I have no fucking clue what you were debating. It starts with Chinese EVs and then veered off. What this dialogue continuous or did you cut parts?
I didn't get the whole conversation but I would point out that this has become the standard operating playbook for those still trying to defend the idea of free trade. They prefer to constantly twist and change directions to avoid answering specific questions or defending specific actions.
In the 90s i backpacked throughout SE Asia. I remember a fishing village of bamboo huts on stilts with a single wire tenuously strung from hut to hut. On my rickshaw ride to the local pier i could see into each home. I’ll never forget; each had a handful of young kids watching Cartoon Network & spongebob on an old tv. I knew then there are multitudes of ppl who want a little bit of what we had: AC, plumbing, refrigerator, maybe even a car…
All these professors, economists, policy wonks have debated globalization without ever understanding what a person in the developing world would do to have a better standard of living- similar to the west. Globalization was a tsunami that would never have been impeded by a dike of protectionism. Could we have smoothed things around the edges with better policies? Sure. But probably 1billion ppl were brought out of subsistence poverty during those two decades. It would take great hubris to think we could've stopped force like that.
It was never a question of stopping it. We weren't going to stop anti-biotics from greatly improving life expectancy either. The question is more about how we shaped it and whether that particular model is working. To which the answer is that in disconnect trade from things like mutual defense, shared values and rule of law, we inadvertently created a massive tragedy of the commons.
We're undermining and punishing the democratic allied nations that reasonably protect their own workers and environments, by rewarding the corrupt and/or authoritarian nations that exploit their own people and pollute their own environments. That has led us to the point in time where those corrupt and authoritarian nations are now stealing the territories of their weaker neighbors. Meanwhile the democratic responsible nations are struggling to respond since many of them have gotten to used to beggaring their fellow democratic nations to try and defend their industries from those corrupt and/or authoritarian nations that keep undermining their domestic industries.
Or, we reward the lack of worker's right and environmental protects, as well as the corruption that is Mexico. This even while we ignore the drug smuggling, human trafficking as well as how the Mexican government keeps siding with other corrupt nations like Cuba and Venezuela, who in turn are aligned with Russia and China. This punishes Canada for protecting their workers and environment by hollowing out their industrial base. Meanwhile we keep demanding the Canadians spend their own blood and treasure helping us fight the pirates and chase the terrorists that are attacking the foreign supply chains feeding those Mexican factories.
I just went over to the American Compass to read the full debate, which was pretty fun for me. Not too wonky and easy to follow, even with bits of humor.
I'm going to rename my first born Tai.
It's interesting that economists recognise a problem, and it is worldwide. Let's see if they, we, can fix it.
The Free Trade people sound like a bunch of insufferable pricks.
Cass is intellectually dishonest though by conflating NAFTA with China into the WTO. NAFTA was great for American manufacturing and he’s implying that Lawrence somehow manipulated the Bush administration into doing nothing as we hemorrhaged jobs to China which is absurd.
Bush believed making China great again was good for America and unfortunately he used his over 80% approval rating to steamroll everyone with economic and foreign policy. And remember in 2008 Bush’s last foreign trip was a victory lap at the Beijing Olympics…Bush made China great again by shipping working class jobs to China and shipping the sons and daughters of the working class to Iraq and Afghanistan.
NAFTA was not great for American manufacturing. Maybe for the corporations that reaped the monetary rewards, but certainly not for the thousands and thousands of Americans who lost their well-paying jobs and had extremely limited opportunities to find new jobs at comparative wages.
That Trade Assistance program for displaced workers turned out to be a boondoggle that hardly assisted anyone. Robert Reich, US Secretary of Labor at the time NAFTA was passed, believed that the TAA was vastly underfunded, and that not enough consideration was given to how to help the trade losers.
As far as China, President Clinton played a huge role in paving the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization. He and others sincerely believed that allowing China entry into the WTO would result in China becoming more of a democracy. Suffice to say, that’s not how it turned out.
The negotiated WTO rules allowed for the use of tariffs on China if it was determined that China was playing unfairly. China was clearly manipulating its currency to make its products more attractive to overseas markets, but Bush did not want to impose tariffs for fear of rising prices and political backlash. Tariffs could have helped at that time.
Later, when Biden did use tariffs to protect American industries, he was criticized by many economists and even some in his own administration for inviting higher prices.
We have actual data that shows manufacturing jobs increased after NAFTA and Detroit metro actually added population (a proxy for manufacturing health) through Clinton’s presidency. Most people conflate China into the WTO with NAFTA…but China into the WTO was in December 2001…and 2002 is when we started hemorrhaging jobs to China. Clinton left office with more manufacturing jobs than he started with and the notion Clinton was so all powerful that 12 years of globalist Bushes are rendered meaningless is absurd. And one of the most common mistakes people make is saying Clinton was president in December 2001 when he hadn’t been president for almost a year. Also if you remember the 1990s oil was cheap and Mexico and Canada are petrostates of varying degrees and so both their currencies declined relative to the dollar which was a big part of the trade situation at the same time as NAFTA
Anyway, I know a lot more than you and the notion the underwear factories (which is what we lost to Mexico after NAFTA) in some of the most poverty stricken communities in the Carolinas was some great loss is equally absurd as the other “facts” you believe you know! 😉
This is one of a number of articles detailing how terrible NAFTA has been to the American worker. It was written by Jeff Faux, founder of the respected Economic Policy Institute. Hope you can find time to read it. Remember, NAFTA set the template for the World Trade Organization, which China was allowed to join. Then came the "China Shock."
NAFTA, Twenty Years After: A Disaster
by Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute
"Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring “good-paying American jobs,” a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Instead, NAFTA directly cost the United States. a net loss of 700,000 jobs. The surplus with Mexico turned into a chronic deficit. And the economic dislocation in Mexico increased the the flow of undocumented workers into the United States.
"The agreements traded away the interests of American workers in favor of the interests of American corporations eager to produce for the U.S. market in countries where labor is cheap, environment and public health regulations weak, and governments easily bribable.
"Among other things, NAFTA granted corporations extraordinary legal protections against national labor and environmental laws that that they could claim threatened future profits. At the same time, workers and unions were denied the legal status needed to defend themselves in these new cross-border jurisdictions."
https://www.epi.org/blog/nafta-twenty-years-disaster/
The Clinton economy boomed after NAFTA and specifically we added manufacturing jobs and Detroit metro gained population. Any data that shows NAFTA cost jobs is irrelevant because it was more likely the exchange rates with Mexico and Canada that cost jobs in a economic climate in which the American job market was very strong across the board. Contrast that job market with the very strange “jobless recovery” after the 2001 very mild recession. So just forget everything you learned about NAFTA and focus on the 2002-2003 jobless recovery and then the 2005-2008 elevated CPI and you will know more economic history than 99% of Americans.
Also, yes, Clinton was not president when China's entry into the WTO was granted in late 2001, but he had much influence and his NAFTA set the blueprint for the World Trade Organization.
This is the draft of an article I wrote about the harm caused by NAFTA for the Hispanic newspaper, El Obervador, located in San Jose, CA. It was published, and I tried looking for an online copy, but I couldn't find an archive on their website where it can be found. It was published in 2015 as "The HIgh Cost of Free Trade."
"Mexican and American workers have paid a high price for free trade. The 1995 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which broke down tariff and regulatory trade barriers between Mexico, the United States and Canada, has led to lost jobs and low wages, as well as increased immigration to the US by Mexicans who lost their livelihood due to NAFTA policies. NAFTA has caused a lot of suffering for many people.
'Let’s start with Mexico. Small-scale, single-family Mexican farmers have long grown corn as a means to provide for themselves and their families, selling enough to get by until the next harvest. However, NAFTA allowed large-sized, corporate American farmers, who benefitted from huge monetary subsidies from the American government, to sell corn in Mexico at a price below what it costs to grow corn in Mexico.
'Mexican farmers could not compete with the lower-priced American corn, and found themselves without a means to earn money. They had few, if any, opportunities in Mexico, and many left for the United States to look for work. Immigration to America increased dramatically after the implementation of NAFTA.
'In 1990, several years before NAFTA, approximately 4.5 million Mexican-born people lived in the United States. Currently, as stated by the PEW Hispanic Research Center, there are approximately 11.5 million. The state of Oaxaca was hit especially hard. According to the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants, there are now 500,000 Oaxacans living in the United States, 300,000 in California alone.
'Oaxacans have held rallies centered on “The Right to Stay Home,” where impassioned speeches were given and the phrase, “El derecho de no migrar (the right to not migrate)” was shouted over and over again in Spanish, and in the indigenous languages of Mixteco and Triqui, as many indigenous communities were affected.
'A 2005 study by the World Bank, commissioned by the Mexican government, found that the extreme rural poverty rate of 37% prior to NAFTA in 1992-4, jumped to about 52% in 1996-8 after NAFTA took effect. This was due, the report said, “mainly by the 1995 economic crisis, the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant wages, and falling agricultural prices.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages have fallen throughout Mexico. A minimum wage earner in Mexico today is able to buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than on the day that NAFTA took effect.
'Things also haven’t been rosy on the American side of the border. According to Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and other institutes, about 1 million American workers (which includes many Mexican-Americans), lost their livelihoods due to corporations moving their factories to Mexico to take advantage of the lower wages. These displaced American workers spend a long time unemployed, and when they do find another job, it is often at lower wages.
'Many American corporations now use the very real threat of moving to Mexico when faced with demands for higher wages and better benefits. As the New York Times notes, the downfall of manufacturing is a major reason for the widening income gap between the rich and the rest of us. Corporations and investors like free trade because it increases their profits, as they can sell their products, which are made at low cost, in areas where incomes and wages are high.
'The US is now engaged in negotiations for another free trade treaty called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This has been called “NAFTA on steroids” and involves twelve countries: the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
'President Obama is in favor of it, but many liberal Democrats and economists have spoken out against it. These include the fiery progressives Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the outspoken economists Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich and Paul Krugman.
We should listen to them. The Trans-Pacific Partnership promises more suffering for the American and Mexican worker, and more riches for the already rich. Enough already!
It doesn't matter. The isolationists control the entire federal government, again. The free trade crowd was kicked out of the party years ago. It's time to man up and take responsibility. The backward looking grievance has become boring.
Adam Smith knew that there is no such thing as pure economics in the real world. There was and always will be only political economy. The economists of twentieth century, especially after the fall of Soviet Union, forgot about the political part and fell for the lunacy of pure economics. It's just like open borders for the sake of universal human rights. It was utterly insane.
That’s incorrect. We’ve added manufacturing jobs since 2010 and Biden accelerated the adding of manufacturing jobs and yet the people that were most vocal about wanting more manufacturing jobs voted for the party that shipped the jobs to China. So the problem is the right wing echo chamber pushing false narratives that confuse Americans into voting against their economic interests.
You are reducing politics to partisanship, that’s a road to hell for sure
That’s what Cass is doing. I don’t care about partisanship….Bush was an awful president that did awful things that’s just reality. Trump’s first term featured Bush retreads and it wasn’t as awful because at least Trump figured it out eventually.
I agreed that GWB screwed up big time, thanks in part to advices from the Harvard economists on this panel. I also agree that Trump made and is making plenty of mistakes. But I think it’s lunacy to claim that Biden made better economic policies than Trump did.
If you understand what happened in 2020 with $250 billion in PPP fraud and then unfortunately Republicans rejected the vaccine in 2021 and then the crazy weather events in TX/Louisiana starting in August 2020 then that is the reason for the difference in inflation between America and EU prior to Putin invading Ukraine.
"Free trade" and from the people who say there is no free lunch? What?
Your republican party I would join!
The university = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
Katherine and Oren, spot on thank you both for your intelligence and mostly intellectual honesty. You're the type people we need to take us into the future.
Larry Summers??
Good discussion. Thanks for the link to the transcript.
Oren, Winnie the Pooh in a tuxedo:)
His legacy is forever lashed to Don, the father of the “new” right. He knowingly bought the Don ticket, along with his shapeshifter bud JD. Now he’s takin the ride:).
And, why doesn’t DonOrenomics entail taking the taco tariffs to the supine Congress for approval? To achieve the manufacturing renaissance we’ve been promised, shouldn’t they be permanent? Maybe that would help reverse the manufacturing employment declines we experienced in Don’s first year?
Rude. As in not helpful.
We all have a choice to make, especially elites with a platform. Like Oren, I've made mine.
My post doesn't remotely compare to our president's online presence. But, his would seem to matter more? Try reading his daily bleats-every word, every day. Then ruminate on the fact the loon has his finger on the button.
Good luck America.
Hi Oren, thanks for your post and wanted to add that I followed Katherine Tai throughout her tenure as US Trade Representative under the Biden administration. She is excellent and had the strength and courage to stand up to those who wanted Biden to remove the tariffs placed on China. I was even thinking that the Trump administration would benefit from her inclusion on his economic and trade team. They would benefit from your inclusion as well.
Anything China chooses to invest in using public funds lowers the expected rate of return for competitors reliant on financial markets.
This has helped drive Wall Street from investing in productive assets to various forms of grift - buying and selling assets simply to make money on the transaction. Selling the Industrial Midwest - the Rust Belt- off to the highest bidder.
Debating Larry Summers and criticizing Wall Street are unlikely to change anything. And using tariffs as a means of increasing the expected rate of return on domestic investments, will not change the underlying “financialization” investment culture.
I would suggest that the New Conservatives should seek common ground with the Post-Neoliberals to develop and implement policies that vastly expand publicly managed sources of venture capital all the way from the Federal government all the way down to county government.
Essentially creating a public counterpart to Wall Street and private capital, which is what is working for China.
For example, here in Pittsburgh the Federal government has been inserted itself into the relationship between Nippon Steel and US Steel. US Steel’s management culture has been dominated by financial interests since JP Morgan bought out Carnegie.
That culture has to go.
is there an audio recording available?
From this clip I have no fucking clue what you were debating. It starts with Chinese EVs and then veered off. What this dialogue continuous or did you cut parts?
I didn't get the whole conversation but I would point out that this has become the standard operating playbook for those still trying to defend the idea of free trade. They prefer to constantly twist and change directions to avoid answering specific questions or defending specific actions.
In the 90s i backpacked throughout SE Asia. I remember a fishing village of bamboo huts on stilts with a single wire tenuously strung from hut to hut. On my rickshaw ride to the local pier i could see into each home. I’ll never forget; each had a handful of young kids watching Cartoon Network & spongebob on an old tv. I knew then there are multitudes of ppl who want a little bit of what we had: AC, plumbing, refrigerator, maybe even a car…
All these professors, economists, policy wonks have debated globalization without ever understanding what a person in the developing world would do to have a better standard of living- similar to the west. Globalization was a tsunami that would never have been impeded by a dike of protectionism. Could we have smoothed things around the edges with better policies? Sure. But probably 1billion ppl were brought out of subsistence poverty during those two decades. It would take great hubris to think we could've stopped force like that.
It was never a question of stopping it. We weren't going to stop anti-biotics from greatly improving life expectancy either. The question is more about how we shaped it and whether that particular model is working. To which the answer is that in disconnect trade from things like mutual defense, shared values and rule of law, we inadvertently created a massive tragedy of the commons.
We're undermining and punishing the democratic allied nations that reasonably protect their own workers and environments, by rewarding the corrupt and/or authoritarian nations that exploit their own people and pollute their own environments. That has led us to the point in time where those corrupt and authoritarian nations are now stealing the territories of their weaker neighbors. Meanwhile the democratic responsible nations are struggling to respond since many of them have gotten to used to beggaring their fellow democratic nations to try and defend their industries from those corrupt and/or authoritarian nations that keep undermining their domestic industries.
Or, we reward the lack of worker's right and environmental protects, as well as the corruption that is Mexico. This even while we ignore the drug smuggling, human trafficking as well as how the Mexican government keeps siding with other corrupt nations like Cuba and Venezuela, who in turn are aligned with Russia and China. This punishes Canada for protecting their workers and environment by hollowing out their industrial base. Meanwhile we keep demanding the Canadians spend their own blood and treasure helping us fight the pirates and chase the terrorists that are attacking the foreign supply chains feeding those Mexican factories.
That's the short version.
I just went over to the American Compass to read the full debate, which was pretty fun for me. Not too wonky and easy to follow, even with bits of humor.
I'm going to rename my first born Tai.
It's interesting that economists recognise a problem, and it is worldwide. Let's see if they, we, can fix it.
Thank you for this!