Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Economic Nationalism: Fair or Foul?

Politics / US Politics Mar 24, 2011 - 04:09 AM GMT

By: Ian_Fletcher

Politics Because we have a national government, because Americans care about what hap­pens to their economy, and because it is the national debate on the question that will bring changes or fail to, our trade problems will be fixed in Washington or not at all. As economist Herman Daly of the University of Maryland, best known for his work on ecological economics, puts it, “Free trade makes it very hard to deal with these root causes at a national level, which is the only level at which effective social controls over the economy exist.”


Unfortunately, critics of America’s trade mess are often confronted with the idea that caring about the well-being of other Americans more than foreigners is either a) irrational or b) downright evil.

It’s the latter category that concerns me here. For example, take this quote from economist Steven Landsburg of the University of Rochester:
I hold this truth to be self-evident: It is just plain ugly to care more about total strangers in Detroit than about total strangers in Juarez. Of course we care most about the people closest to us—our families more than our friends and our friends more than our acquaintances. But once you start talking about total strangers, they all ought to be on pretty much the same footing. (Forbes Magazine, “Xenophobia and Politics: Why Protectionism Is a Lot Like Racism”)

“Hold this truth to be self-evident” is a pretty cocky allusion, given that the Founding Fathers were protectionists.

As for “a lot like racism,” my assumption here is that he’s just trying to intimidate his opponents with bad words. The connection he seems to draw is that protectionism is somehow “like” racism because it involves discriminating between two different groups of people. But as the blue-plate special at the local diner is, er, “discrimination,” (of a kind we economists call price discrimination) I don’t think anyone has good reason to get offended here on civil-rights grounds.

In fact, there’s good reason to believe that protectionism, and economic nationalism more generally, cuts the other way. It is, in fact, one of the best policies we have left for uniting our increasingly diverse nation.

Why? Because it is something all Americans can agree on despite our differences of race, ethnicity, culture, lifestyle, religion and the other things that divide us.

We need something in common if we are to have the shared civic identity needed for democracy. A shared economy is a good start, though we will need policies which act on this fact (like protectionism) to get meaningful mileage out of it.

Not that economic nationalism doesn’t have obvious dangers. Of course it does. Like any kind of nationalism, it can go either way: it can either make people willing to sacrifice for their community, or it can make them act as predators towards other communities. Both phenomena have long historical records.

It follows that if we are to embrace economic nationalism, we need to answer the question of what must it look like, in order to be ethically legitimate? I would argue that the basic criteria for ethically legitimate economic nationalism are the following:

1) It must aim at the economic good of the nation as a whole, not just of special interests dressing themselves up as such. The latter is, of course, the classic danger of protectionism incompetently implemented, as when it protects industries based on who had the smarter lobbyist.

2) It must allow other nations the same right to fight for their own people’s economic interests as we claim for ours. Fair is fair, and we’re better off in a contented world, anyway.

3) It must be based on sound economics and policies that actually work, not misguided nostrums and empty populist gestures. I spent an entire chapter of my book debunking such ideas.

4) It must be open to interpretation according to either partisan leaning, that is, it must not be of itself a left-wing or right-wing position. If economic nationalism makes sense, it deserves to be part of the broad national consensus.

I am sick to death of the phony humanitarianism of economic globalists. They preen no end about how globalism serves the interests of all humanity, but in reality, this is just a convenient excuse for repudiating obligations to their fellow Americans while assuming—on paper—moral obligations to foreigners who have no power to make them live up to those obligations. Embracing our economic obligations to our own countrymen would be a far more meaningful step for anyone who really cares about other people.

Ian Fletcher is the author of the new book Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why (USBIC, $24.95)  He is an Adjunct Fellow at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933.  He was previously an economist in private practice, mostly serving hedge funds and private equity firms. He may be contacted at ian.fletcher@usbic.net.

© 2011 Copyright  Ian Fletcher - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in