Seattle WTO protests called for Left-protectionism. Daniel Sheehan/Liaison Agency/Newsmakers
Recent speculation that Donald Trump’s billionaire cabinet would lead to a more orthodox consensus on global trade came to halt earlier this week, when Trump promised new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. Though eager to be in Trump’s good graces, many Republicans such as incoming Senate Majority leader John Thune still view tariffs as a step toward restricting the “free market” and warn about retaliation against America’s export interests. Another Republican Senator recently told Politico that tariffs amounted to a “sin tax”, unwittingly echoing Kamala Harris, who likened them to a punitive national “sales tax”.
As that similarity reveals, tariffs and other trade restrictions are divisive across the political spectrum. High-profile, California-based donors had hoped a Harris administration would snuff out Joe Biden’s policy experiments which challenged globalisation. But some union-aligned Democrats still believe that a more effective leader could salvage Biden’s vision of a domestic manufacturing renaissance. The evolving politics of protectionism is bound to scramble traditional partisan alignments in this volatile era of geopolitics.
The great irony of the tariff debate is that Trump’s signature issue was largely stolen from Rust Belt Democrats. Although Trump’s nativist rhetoric and broadsides against “cheating”, not just by China but close allies, has alarmed the liberal foreign policy establishment over the years, his fundamental critique of free trade is not so different from the stance adopted by earlier Democrats.
Between the late Sixties and early Eighties, a number of New Deal-style liberals dropped the Democratic Party’s historical support for trade liberalisation and turned toward full-bore protectionism. On top of advocating aggressive trade controls, these liberals focused on reindustrialising the Northeast and Midwest. The argument was essentially twofold: postwar trade agreements were destabilising wages and employment in once-flourishing manufacturing sectors while doing little to improve the welfare of exploited “sweat shop” workers abroad. This system of trade integration — engineered by import lobbies, US-based multinationals, and their bipartisan allies in Washington — represented what progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren later dubbed a “race to the bottom”.
The final iteration of this Left-protectionist vision, considerably watered down by the rise of tech-obsessed “Atari Democrats” and policy advisors like the young Robert Reich, received two fatal blows. First, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide re-election, and then Bill Clinton’s support for NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. But Rust Belt Democrats persevered for a time. As the China Shock unfolded, rising Democratic stars like Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, a “progressive” economic nationalist, proved critical to the Democratic Party retaking Congress in 2006 and staying competitive in the industrial heartland.
There was hope among economic progressives that Barack Obama would use his formidable 2008 victory to pursue fair trade. Yet momentum behind reforms to globalisation stalled abruptly under his presidency. After the 2009 auto bailout, his administration mostly resumed the path charted by Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush. And by 2015, the Trans-Pacific-Partnership, another technocratic free-trade agreement, was on the horizon. The opening was Trump’s to seize.
Of course, Trump’s haphazard efforts to reorder global trade occurred in a different economy than the one which had vexed old-school liberals. The new politics of protectionism also took place in a country much more polarised by region — and one in which the parties had largely swapped their geographical orientations, if not quite their policy commitments. That had a strange effect on how the parties responded to the tariffs introduced by Trump’s trade ambassador, Robert Lighthizer. Republicans who supported the old Washington Consensus on globalisation drew their strength from the Midwest and the South, regions that were now suffering the most from trade shocks. Meanwhile, the Democrats, once a vehicle for both the South’s development and industrial workers, handily dominated the Northeastern and Pacific coasts — affluent hubs that had long since turned the corner on industrial decline.
The basis for a coherent industrial strategy was stymied by this evolution in the party system. Trump’s unique coalition of ex-Democrats and populist independents did not fit easily in either party’s tent. Although Democrats retained some loyalty in ailing manufacturing districts, they increasingly represented highly educated metro areas that had benefitted most from the tech boom and globalisation. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan’s Republicans, for their part, were reluctant to drop their faith in free-trade, even though the party’s new working-class base opposed it and even though the GOP historically had been the party of industrial protectionism. Despite working-class voters’ longstanding support for a new approach to trade, the dominant wings of both parties treated tariffs and similar measures as anathema to America’s global leadership.
These dynamics further constrained the rise of a protectionist bloc in Congress during Trump’s first term. While House Democrats worked closely with Lighthizer on the USMCA, NAFTA’s replacement, mainstream liberal discourse routinely mocked Trump’s declaration that he was a “Tariff Man”. Besides the political risks of “agreeing” with Trump on trade during the high tide of the “Resistance”, national Democrats were hesitant over whether to try to win back white industrial workers or harness identity politics to mobilise the so-called “rising American electorate”. Under Biden, the pendulum swung toward the former strategy. This vindicated Rust Belt Democrats like Senator Brown who had pleaded with the party establishment to revise trade policy and decisively counter China’s export model. By then, however, the architects of Bidenism were conjuring a New Deal electorate whose remnants no longer trusted Democrats to deliver on trade. Inflation, meanwhile, had irreversibly soured many voters on the economy, sapping the positive impact of policies decades in the making. Brown and a handful of other red- and purple-state Democrats were among the casualties on election night.
The odds of deeper collaboration between protectionist Democrats and the incoming administration are hazy at best. The ranks of the former are now diminished, while the Wall Street types jockeying for influence are plainly allergic to a populist, pro-manufacturing agenda. As signalled by his pick of hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to lead the Treasury Department, Trump may simply resort to using the threat of new tariffs as a bargaining tool, rather than building on Biden’s more interventionist approach to long-term investment.
If Trump flounders, Democrats may once more have a window to argue they have the vision and the policies to rebuild an egalitarian economy. A nascent group of younger House Democrats who managed to fend off the GOP in parts of the Rust Belt are turning up the dial on economic populism, arguing for both more corporate oversight and more support for manufacturing. Along with Minnesota’s Ken Martin, a populist contender to chair the Democratic National Committee, these Democrats have not disowned Biden’s economic agenda. But they have reproached the party’s liberal elite and media allies, whose blithe view of the economy’s true health betrayed a maddening condescension toward discontent workers.
Blue-city progressives, meanwhile, are at a crossroads: with the purported rise of the “Trump-AOC voter”, they must come to terms with a multiracial electorate that defies easy categorisation on cultural issues and economics. But it is doubtful they can simply shed their close association with doctrinaire identity politics, much as they might find it advantageous to ally with the Rust Belt populists and emphasise workers’ top concerns. For now, both factions are a minority in a party whose internal disagreements on trade and industrial policy cut across its Left and centrist flanks.
Ultimately, any potential reconfiguration of the Democratic Party toward Left-protectionism won’t be possible without an overhaul of its national political strategy. Yet, under its present, ageing leadership, the party’s geographical woes seem insurmountable. Establishment coastal liberals tend to recoil from tariffs, and their potential heirs, in marked contrast to both the populists and the progressives, are mounting a new defence of globalisation. Until a new crop of Democrats forcefully champion left-behind America, the party will remain embattled — and estranged from the liberalism which once gave it purpose.
Justin H. Vassallo is a writer and researcher specialising in American political development, political economy, party systems, and ideology. He is also a columnist at Compact magazine.
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SubscribeAlso think this is too wordy and conceptually blurry. Neocons wanted to roll out American style individualism worldwide, using intervention to flip countries along the way to ‘secure the world for freedom’, picking up financial assets as a result (for defence and oil industries).
Current progressive liberals want to role out American style diversity and rights worldwide, using intervention to flip countries along the way for ‘human rights’, globalising the world as one big financial asset (for tech and service companies).
Both sides are adamantly anti-popularist, because popularism is a lot of little people waving to stop the interventionism and focus on practical issues at home first, with no interest in dubious political theories.
Pride comes before a fall. After apparently winning the Cold War (caveat China) the US ballsed things up.
This is just too wordy. I waded through it and got some of the essence, but cannot be sure that I completely understood it, or if I am a neo-conservative or a post-liberal.
Probably I am a post-liberal, but I also noticed with alarm the suggestion that post liberalism flirts with populism. I cannot be linked to populism, which is used as a pejorative, but why? Why is a “political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups” so scorned?
Then follows a paragraph from the pits of hell “As UnHerd‘s Peter Franklin wrote in 2019, he was drawn to post-liberalism’s “respect for human dignity” that “distinguishes [it] from populism”, is “incompatible with collectivist ideas that instrumentalise the individual in service to some group identity; and also at odds with atomistic individualism”.
I think much of the difficulty in comprehension – I suffered from it too – is due to the failure to define “liberalism”. There are at least two accepted meanings. One is Classical Liberalism, which is very similar if not identical to Libertarianism. The second is what we here in the States might call New Deal Liberalism, which is really quasi-Socialism. The two match up very poorly, at least on economics, and yet the author never specifies of which one he writes.
“he was drawn to post-liberalism’s “respect for human dignity” that “distinguishes [it] from populism”, is “incompatible with collectivist ideas that instrumentalise the individual in service to some group identity;”
This is Post-Modernism, that evil, Nihilist philosophy which denies any universality, such as all traditional cultural rules, morality, ethics, religion, patriotism, family, and any point, or in fact reality, in existence other than self. And the self is gone once dead, so that is no validity either. It is all about tearing down all which humanity has built up, reducing all to Solipsism and Nihlos, and thus basically the philosophy of Satan. (Came from Wiemar Republic existentialism/Marxism/Freudism of the Frankfurt School – then to Foucault and Derrida in the 70s. There was unparalleled evil (and creativity, but much of it turned very dark) in 1930s Germany, Critical Theory came from this all – and so CRT.
Neo-Cons and Neo-Liberal were way too evangelizing, and way too into the Industrial Complex though. I wish for a return to Conservative and Traditional Liberal values – and none of this Neo, and Post crap. Anything which can look at the 10 commandments, 5-10, and think – ‘those look good to me’.
How is it going Leslie? I am canning garden figs and pears this week, and off to do my constant fishing as I need to be on the water pretty much daily. I feed quite a few non-red meat eaters, and myself and family fishing, I no longer commercial fish, but instead give it away, being on the water fishing is the thing which always brings my mind back to peace – thinking of the world today requires I then be outside hours to get over the grimness of politics man is destroying him self with. I will leave here with the dogs, drive 1/4 mile to a marsh and get into it and catch bait for 1/2 an hour, then out on the big water and just be out there alone for 2 hours, then 1/2 hour cleaning fish, and home, mentally refreshed.
Well said. I consider myself a small “c” conservative.
As such I don’t believe in revolutionary change but in conserving what is best. And I also believe, within the bounds of freedom, society should operate for the benefit of everyone within a democratic framework. I most certainly don’t believe people should be told what is good for them by a pseudo elite.
As a classical liberal conservative, I hate neoconservatives. Neocons have redefined freedom as freedom to do whatever we want to you for your own good, strong national defense as screwing around and blowing stuff up in other countries without a plan, and capitalism as corporate monopolies in cahoots with government regulators. My opinion of neoliberals, the horrible inheritors of mid-19th to mid-20th progressivism, the modern followers of Wilson and Bernays, is just as low.
It is actually not too hard to tell the difference between neocons and neoliberals. See if someone says we are bombing another country in the name of “freedom,” that person is a neocon, but if someone says we are bombing another country in the name of “human rights,” that is a neoliberal. Now if someone says they are kissing corporate ass in the name of “free markets,” that person is a neocon, but if they say they are kissing corporate ass in the name of “social justice” that person is a neoliberal. Now if you are a traditional liberal or conservative you might wonder how they have anything to with your principles or values. Not to worry! As far as they are concerned all of your principles and values are outdated and they are smarter, better, and more moral than you ever were. What evidence they base this on given how questionable many of their current policies and actions are is still a mystery.
A lot of us on the right remember the damage that was done to the United States by the neocons and now we are watching the transformation of the Democrat party in overdrive with some of it being the absolute worst impulses of the left and yet some of it feels suspiciously familiar. Of course, Bush era neocons being treated as political rockstars and self-proclaimed Marxists being overly friendly with corporate monopolies just because they chant the right slogan might have been a bit of a red flag. I’m getting flashbacks to when the elite pretended to care about Middle America, just to send rural kids overseas.
Word Salad, so I needed to get to grips with some of the terms being tossed around and this was the top of my search:
“We can initially define post-liberalism by distinguishing it from liberalism and neo-liberalism. From liberal governmentality post-liberalism retains the “conduct of conduct” through the manipulation of interests, and from neo-liberal economic theory it adopts the idea that the market as a locus of veridiction”
“We can also define post-liberalism more formally by its peculiar political or, rather, a-political rationality. Whereas liberalism (and neo-liberalism as well) subscribed to a political reason of order, as did absolutist reason of state, which liberalism criticized and supplanted, post-liberalism adopts what we call the reason of regulated chaos or managed non-order. In contrast to the strategic and totalising ambitions of politics understood as the quest for order, be it hierarchical or reciprocal,”
“*This short article draws on material from: Laurence McFalls and Mariella Pandolfi, “Therapeusis and Parrhesia”, in: James Faubion, ed., Foucault Now (forthcoming).” (*it is not a short article)
FFS! (Foucault though – so you know it is going to be pretty evil and hopeless – so – is Post-Liberalism some kind of Post-Modernism/Liberalism?, is Derrida Post Liberalism too?) I look forward to reading some poster summing all this up into something which makes sense to me. I do wonder if people who talk in this manner are actually making sense, or if they have some thought in their head and just cannot explain it.
“I look forward to reading some poster summing all this up into something which makes sense to me.”
Okay: Don’t blame the author. What you see is a simplified run-through of the weapon’s grade self-indulgence, career grubbing and intellectual dishonesty that passes for political science in today’s academy. When something seems to make no sense to you, nine times out of ten it is because there is no sense to be made.
Nicely put, in all honesty when I look back then the whole thing didn’t make one bit of sense, but what do I know?
What even is “post-liberalism”? Almost like “antifa” , it is a term invented by a loose alliance of people who define themselves in opposition to something. Yet those who define ourselves as classically “Liberal” don’t even recognise the definition of liberalism that “post-liberals” apply. It is a nonsense
Let me make this clear: the original neoconservatives were New York liberals, mostly Jews, who had been literally and figuratively “mugged by reality.” It was a domestic political position, not a foreign affairs or globalist one.
I was there. I know. One only had to read the columns in the tabloid New York Post — Murray Kempton, Harriet Van Horne, Jimmy Breslin, Albert Shanker, Dr Rose Franzblau, Max Lerner and the editorial page editor, James Wechsler — all of them old Lefties, to understand the change that was happening. As Daniel Bell is quoted in the article, they were culturally conservative and were totally put off by the New Left and the counter-culture…unless it was being “Clean for Gene” (McCarthy).
The 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville school teachers’ strike, not any foreign policy issue, was absolutely pivotal in the creation of neoconservatism. Second in importance was the seizure of Columbia University’s administration building by students led by Mark Rudd. Both events traumatized NY Jews and liberals. For the first time since MLK blacks and Jews were screaming at each other and the sacredness of higher education was being questioned. Both of these developments boggled the minds of liberal NYers, especially Jews.
And exacerbating everything was the unprecedented increase in violent crime, the literal muggings, then as now the wildly disproportionate province of blacks. Suddenly the Upper West Side, Greenwich Village, Central Park and Ocean Parkway were not safe for people’s mothers and grandmothers…and everybody knew why.
It’s not an accident that in 1969 Norman Mailer ran for NYC Mayor (with Jimmy Breslin as his running mate) as a self-styled “Left Conservative.”
The foreign policy stuff came a lot later. In 1968-9, Jews were against “The Imperial Presidency” (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s book) and against Vietnam. Allard Lowenstein was crucial to getting McCarthy to run against warmonger LBJ.
So today the real comparison of neoconservatives to post-liberals is not one based on aversion to global capitalism and the Great Reset. It is Bret Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Bari Weiss and Nick Christakis (just like their daddies and uncles) reacting to events at Evergreen College, Yale and the offices of The NY Times (“the Jewish Bible”) and to the “1619 Project Riots” of last summer, a title Nicole Hannah-Jones cheerfully accepted.
Talking about foreign affairs and the imperatives of capitalism is only intellectual window dressing for cultural revulsion.