Ian Fletcher on Trump
May 10, 2016
IAN FLETCHER, author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why, comes close to endorsing Trump in the liberal Huffington Post:
As a trade specialist, I’ve had my eye on Trump for years. That’s why I wrote this article way back in 2011:
I think Mr. Trump understands this better than anyone else. That’s one of the things I like about him. The reality is that the United States is already in a trade war with China. Kowtowing to China today is economic appeasement, with the same result as political appeasement in the 1930s: a few more years of relative quiet with a bigger explosion at the end.
I also predicted, long, long before the current election cycle, that economic nationalism, the essence of Trump’s appeal, would take over the Republican party:
Foreign state capitalism is forcing America into economic nationalism. Like it or not, we don’t have a choice – except, of course, surrender and economic decline. For the first time since the American Revolution, the United States is being pushed around by foreign economic forces, rather than being an economic force reshaping the rest of the world. The hard fact is that America cannot compete playing Marquis of Queensbury rules against foreign competitors (read: “China”) who play by the Law of the Jungle.
We can’t even compete against foreign competitors who play by the cleaned-up, polite, gentrified version of the same practiced by Japan, Germany, and their imitators from South Korea to Switzerland. If the Republican party doesn’t get ahead of this curve here and proactively embrace economic nationalism, it risks being sidelined for a generation or more by the Democrats embracing it.
Naturally, Mr. Trump represents a lot more than hawkishness on trade. His other big issues simply aren’t my field of expertise and I have nothing to say about them.
What do I think of his chances in the general election? I have no secret polling data, and nothing to add to the obvious comments, like “he needs to offer specifics, clean up his clown act, and sound presidential,” that everybody is already making. The one new thing I can say, with great confidence, is that when Hillary Clinton forces a real national argument between his nationalist vision of economics and her globalist one, she will lose that argument. The hard economic facts, and public sentiment, will fall on his side.
Whether you like the messenger or not, economic nationalism is here to stay
