Protectionism is back, baby!

Last updated on: March 8, 2016 at 11:04 am by Jane the Actuary

Protectionism is back, baby! 2016-03-08T11:04:14-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Bet you didn’t think Trump and Sanders have anything in common — but they do. One might even say that they have everything in common, in that the very key of their platform is essentially the same.

No, I’m not talking about the Free College that gets the young ‘uns excited. Nor the single payer healthcare system, nor the $15/hr minimum wage.

But each of the two of them promises protectionism. They promise a narrow protectionism of trade restrictions, and ending existing trade deals such as NAFTA, and a broader platform of unspecified measures to bring offshored jobs back to the United States, and to prevent companies from moving additional production out of the country. Have you noticed that each of them has separately criticized Nabisco for moving jobs to Mexico?

It’s as if we have a replay of the 1992 election — all we need is for these two candidates to start talking about the “giant sucking sound.”

And their other promises are really two sides of the same coin: Trump offers protection in the form of a deportation program for illegal immigrants, to protect Americans from job loss, wage undercutting, social welfare costs, and crime risks. (It may be a stretch, but Trump’s Muslim Moratorium is also about protection — protecting the Homeland from terrorism.) Sanders offers protection from wage-stagnation via his $15/hour wage, and offers a massive government jobs program via infrastructure spending, creating 13 million (short-term?) jobs.

As far as healthcare, yes, Sanders offers single payer, but Trump, for months, before revealing mostly emptiness, promised “we’re going to take care of everyone.”

Clinton? Well, I don’t really know if her new protectionist impulse is genuine or not, given Bill Clinton’s record of support for free trade. Hence, I’m not really interested in parsing her statements, because they seem to be in response to Sanders. Cruz and Rubio certainly don’t take this approach, instead calling for regulatory and other reform to help American companies be more competitive, and not offering a specific remedy for Americans adversely affected by globalization, so far as I know.

Now, of course, you’ll tell me, these men are nothing alike. Trump’s record is of personal support for job offshoring, in terms of the manufacture of Trump-branded items. And Sanders’ promises are largely pie-in-the-sky, but he believes in them passionately, unlike Trump, who has merely assessed the political mood. But I’m not talking about what these men believe in so much as what their supporters do. And maybe Sanders’ protectionism is a small piece of his platform, of not much interest to anyone, and the promises of free college (which, incidentally, is intended to be accomplished through a Rube Goldbergian set of mechanisms, and is only for public schools) and of a $15 minimum wage (which, in case you’ve forgotten, would have tremendous impacts, far beyond fast-food workers, because so many skilled occupations pay below $15/hour, or modestly above), and of Medicaid for All (the proposal for which, even in what’s labelled as the “full plan” on his website, doesn’t answer the key question of how the government will set reimbursement levels or determine access to particular treatments) are the big lures for his supporters.

But isn’t it rather significant that this is the political mood, that these two upstart candidates preach fundamentally the same protectionist gospel? It’s “the economy, stupid,” again, as both these candidates offer hope to their supporters, who feel that globalization has failed them.

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