A tariff primer
From the Economic Policy Institute:
During his presidential campaign, President Trump pledged to impose universal tariffs of 10–60% on all U.S. imports—a whopping $4.2 trillion in goods and services purchased from abroad in 2024. This was always a real possibility. The International Economic Emergency Powers Act gives the president broad authority to do so. In early February the Trump administration seemed to be making good on the threat…
Read about the pro’s and con’s of tariffs here.
Farewell to neoliberalism
Trump’s election is widely – and rightly – seen as marking the end of the neoliberal era of free-market fundamentalism that was institutionalized under Reagan and Thatcher. Describing neoliberalism as “the threadbare rule of plutocrats what pretended to be poverty-fighters,” the distinguished economist Branko Milanovic offers this epitaph:
Neoliberalism was not an ideology of blood and soil but it managed to kill many. It leaves the scene with a scent of falsehood and dishonesty. Not often has an ideology been so mendacious: it called for equality while generating historically unprecedented increases in inequality; it called for democracy while sowing anarchy, discord and chaos; it spoke against ruling classes while creating a new aristocracy of wealth and power; it called for rules while breaking them all; it funded a system of schooled mendacity that tried to erect half-lies as truths.
Read more here.
The anti-social century
In a cover story for The Atlantic called ‘The Anti-Social Century,’ Derek Thompson documents the increasing isolation that has crept into American life, and the interplay between technology and preferences that has been at work. A glaring defect of mainstream economic theory is that it treats preferences and technology as exogenously given (along with the ‘initial distribution of endowments,’ aka property rights): in effect, all are assumed to fall from the sky in a kind of immaculate theoretical conception. This abstraction from reality – in which all of these all in play with far-reaching consequences – helps to explain why economists so often fail to bring the distribution and exercise of power into their equations.
Excerpts from Thompson’s thought-provoking piece:
Degraded public spaces—and degraded public life—are in some ways the other side of all our investments in video games and phones and bigger, better private space. Just as we needed time to see the invisible emissions of the Industrial Revolution, we are only now coming to grips with the negative externalities of a phonebound and homebound world. The media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said of technology that every augmentation is also an amputation. We chose our digitally enhanced world. We did not realize the significance of what was being amputated….
Although technology does not have values of its own, its adoption can create values, even in the absence of a coordinated effort. For decades, we’ve adopted whatever technologies removed friction or increased dopamine, embracing what makes life feel easy and good in the moment. But dopamine is a chemical, not a virtue. And what’s easy is not always what’s best for us. We should ask ourselves: What would it mean to select technology based on long-term health rather than instant gratification? And if technology is hurting our community, what can we do to heal it?
Read more here.
The case for social tariffs
Guess who wrote this?
We need to agree upon the list of socially necessary policies and then set minimum standards that all products, whether domestically produced or imported, must meet…. Environment and labor are areas where this would be possible, but so are worker safety, food safety, and the like. Imports that aren’t produced meeting those minimum standards should have a duty applied to their import price that offsets the unfair and artificial advantage that they currently have.
Read more here.
Class crossed with culture
Timothy Snyder writes on the interplay between class and culture:
Why did people who want better health care vote for Trump? Why do we not have a single-payer system? Who do we pay so much more and get so much less than other people in other countries? Why was it so hard for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who were very popular presidents, to pass the kind of health care reform they favored? Part of it is, of course, that we have too much money in politics (a class factor, let’s say); but part of it is that many people who would gain security, prosperity, and lifespan from a better system don’t want it if they have to share it with others (a culture factor, let’s say).
Read more here.
The fight for the climate is not “over”
Kevin Young on what the election really means:
“The struggle against climate change is over” if Donald Trump wins again, tweeted Bernie Sanders before Election Day 2024. Presumably our fate is now sealed.
The conclusion is understandable. On our current course, we’re already set for about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating in the coming decades. That will kill tens of millions of people from heat stroke, starvation, and disease. Vast portions of the globe will be made uninhabitable while chaos spreads everywhere else.
With the fossil fuel barons now retaking the helm of the world’s most powerful government, changing course becomes harder. In addition to the carbon they’ll add to the atmosphere, their evisceration of laws governing air quality, water contamination, and toxic chemicals will kill tens of thousands in just the next few years.
Yet apocalyptic arguments are both paralyzing to our movement and scientifically misguided. Saving the climate isn’t an all-or-nothing game. We’re very likely to breach the dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold. But there’s an enormous difference between 1.5 and 3 degrees Celsius, or even between 1.5 and 1.6 degrees Celsius. “Every fraction of a degree matters,” as climate experts often remind us.
Furthermore, the notion that we’re locked into a future of “runaway climate change” — a phrase commonly heard on the left — is wrong. As leading climate scientist Michael Mann writes, the best climate models indicate that atmospheric heating will all but cease “once we stop emitting carbon.” The grimmest ecological projections can still be avoided.
Despair also ignores the continued vulnerability of our enemies. Politicians can nudge the energy ship one way or another, but they don’t determine its cardinal direction. Although the White House, Republican Congress, and Supreme Court will do all they can to protect fossil fuel companies and undermine renewable energy, they aren’t the only three power centers in society. The climate’s fate also depends on many other actors, including our movement.
Read more here.
Economics of War and Peace
A timely new video series from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), featuring Econ4’s James Boyce:
Watch the videos here.
The war machine
The animated “teaser” for INET’s forthcoming video series on The Economics of War and Peace, featuring Econ4’s James Boyce:
Source: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/the-war-machine
Mission-led industrial policy
Mariana Mazzucato writes in Finance & Development:
In the past, governments that pursued industrial policies attempted to build national champions by picking winners from among sectors or technologies, often with mixed results. Modern industrial strategy should be different. Instead of picking winners, it should “pick the willing” by setting clear missions—such as solving the climate crisis or strengthening pandemic preparedness—and then shaping economies and markets to accomplish them.
Read more here.
Confronting greedflation
Nick Hanauer – a deconstructor of mythologies peddled by his fellow rich people – writes about Kamala Harris’s attack on price-gouging:
Americans are spending more on virtually everything, from groceries to clothing to appliances. Headlines say those price increases are supposedly a mysterious economic force called “inflation.” But if you compare corporate profits in 2019 to the last four years, you’ll find corporations have gouged their way to an almost unbelievable $1.5 trillion in excess profits since 2020—that’s in addition to their pre-pandemic profit rates.
That means the average American household has paid an eye-popping $12,000 in higher prices solely to pump up quarterly corporate profit margins. To put that figure into perspective, $12,000 could buy the average American household more than two years’ worth of groceries.
Read more here.
