Trump stole tariffs from the Democrats The Left needs to reclaim protectionism

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.

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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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