Trade policies in the age of Trump

And now some people are screaming – ‘What the fuck Balbus does that have to do with trade in the age of Trump’

Neo-liberalist thinking became the most dominant economic model in the US, just as Keynesian economic had been pre 1970’s.

But whereas Keynesianism was a full economic system and one that was about spreading economic benefits throughout a society neo-liberalism was and is not and many of the warnings given about it have turned out to be true.

I’m now hearing form the one time supporters of classical neo-liberalism that it was a good system it just made the mistake of not ‘distributing’ the benefits of it more widely – yes the inevitable outcome of neo-liberalism was the outsourcing of some industry to other countries and a system where the poor and middle class incomes stagnated or shrunk will, those of the better off ballooned but neo-liberalism should have done something about that. Basically they are saying the market failed, but neo-liberalism was based on the market always been right of never failing, if you take that away from neo-liberalism there is no neo-liberalism

Even the right wing libertarian zealots have turned and many seem to have taken on some of the characteristics of the alt-right not the racism but a lot of the anti-globalisation rhetoric, without abandoning ‘belief’ the free market neo-liberalism.

But globalisation is such an important part of neo-liberalism that without it there is no neo-liberalism.

What now seem to be proposed by right wing libertarians is a nationalistic neo-libertarianism economic model, government subsidising and assisting certain groups in a society through a protectionist trade policy while forcing a domestic Social Darwinist free market on everyone else.

It cannot hold without the imposition of authoritarian rule.

So what is to be done?

 

I really don't understand this one. Seriously... the markets have been on a steady upward trend since 2010/2011. This wasn't even exclusively Obama's doing... Bush also had a hand in it, and the 2008 situation was urgent enough that the 'solution' had bipartisan support.

If Trump actually makes it to the end of his term, there are still pretty good odds that there will be a correction or even a crash... and if he somehow gets re-elected, then there definitely will be, and I can't imagine him being able to deal with it either.