"How could the nation that defeated the Nazis, cured polio, and put a man on the moon have become a country that does this in no more than a generation?"
There are probably a lot of answers to this question, but the main one is this: we are idiots. Not me, mind you. But the rest of y'all. No no, not y'all. I mean that collectively the right in the United States have become unmoored from two things that used to keep them fairly well grounded.
The first is sound conservative philosophy. That applies as much to economics as to anything. Most of my pro-Trump friends haven't the foggiest idea who Hayek, Friedman, nor Sowell are. The ones who do seem to have forgotten. As my 24 year old lesbian daughter who works the gun counter at a sporting good store says "They don't really beleive anything except what Trump tells them to beleive..." And I think that's true. They do not seem to know what it means to be a Conservative. They seem to think it means "fight against progressive ideology".
Second, my HarMAG friends seem to have lost touch with sound Christian doctrine. The American evangelical Christian church is largely devoid of anything resembling discipleship. They are evangelized, but not catechized. They seem to think that the Great Commission is fulfilled if we elect an autocratic president who will Make America Great Again by holding an Easter service on the White House lawn while incarcerating any brown person who looks suspicious.
"Another reason is that America is just emerging from a period of popular unrest, in which crazy ideologies of all stripes got far more buy-in than they should have."
Absolutely this. I am not even remotely Right and even I can see that there are ideologies mainly from the very progressive left that have diluted some of the more common issues that would normally draw people together as a voting bloc and instead created distraction and fragmentation that has seen (on both the right and the left) each side bury themselves in internal arguments that serve no one. Either that or they have just pretended it isn't happening and gone along with the trendy issues for the sake of just defeating Trump/election Trump. Clearly this doesn't work.
The multi polar world is happening whether anyone likes it or not just because there are multiple geographic areas with lots of money and opinions. It’s not stoppable
It may not be stupidity alone—but rather a troubling tendency to replace economic understanding with ideology, even when the evidence resists it.
Noah Smith suggests that Trump’s aggressive tariff regime—like the 25% auto duties and sweeping trade actions against allies—amounts to a form of intentional economic self-harm. Granted, some might argue that the trade deficit is a sign of American vulnerability. But Smith counters that it is, in fact, a byproduct of the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency. Other countries must acquire dollars to trade and invest, which means they sell goods to the U.S. and funnel those dollars back into American assets. To run a trade surplus would be to surrender that global position—an outcome few serious economists view as desirable.
Of course, skepticism toward globalization and neoliberal trade policies isn’t unfounded. Factory towns hollowed out. Inequality grew. These were real harms. But Smith argues that the diagnosis has now eclipsed the facts: the belief that free trade “failed” the country has become orthodoxy on both the populist right and the progressive left, despite mounting evidence that the benefits outweighed the costs. The tariffs won’t bring back manufacturing, he warns; they will bring higher prices, slower growth, and a reduced voice for the U.S. in shaping the global order. The tragedy is not just economic miscalculation—it’s that a nation as rich and capable as America is doing this to itself, in the belief that it has already fallen.
He festers always in aggrieved-victim complex, dragging our nation around in revenge mode. Remember, this “Mark Burnett businessman figment of media hype” declared bankruptcy 6 times and routinely shafted the working man in his prior life as heir to daddy’s fortune. We’re living in a cartoon with an evil villain.
The people need to rise and remind MAGA-Congress and billionaire-owned SCOTUS to do their jobs — CHECK POWER.
I note that the voices we hear declaring this to be an unthinkable act that will lead to disaster, are all rather well-off and embedded in the system. They're probably not worrying whether they will still be paying off their mortgage after they have retired, and they are definitely not worrying about how to afford next week's groceries.
It's not the end of the world and it's not even the end of world trade. It is the US adopting a different and much more combative approach to trade negotiations, in service of a philosophy that wants to eliminate the country's trade deficits - that's it. Modern economic history is a series of shocks of various kinds - Nixon departing the gold standard, Volcker hiking interest rates to get rid of stagflation, the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis, to say nothing of 2020s disruptions. Whether this goes well or badly, I strongly doubt it's going to be some kind of decisive derailment of the global economy surpassing all that came before.
I thought you were going to link to something about the Hands Off demonstrations, but it's just another elite pundit with a book to sell... The guy works for The Atlantic, they oppose anything Trump does apriori, except perhaps if he bombs an enemy of Israel. (Maybe *that's* why Trump's people invited Jeffrey Goldberg to join the "Houthi PC Small Group", they actually hoped for some positive coverage?)
I'm not saying that ordinary people will be untouched if this does go wrong. I'm just observing that the public outcry is led by a very different kind of person. There's a figure going around that 50% of American stocks are held by 1% of the population. The pundits, experts, journalists, academics, politicians who chorused in horror - most of them belong to that 1%, I'm sure. Their material incentive to protest Trump's trade policy is different from that of the ordinary people: their incentive is to preserve the value of their financial assets.
They would argue that this is a situation in which everyone sinks or swims together - in fact Derek Thompson says exactly that in the interview above - that crashing the stock market will make it harder for young people to get a job. However, this is one of those areas in which an abyss of immovable skepticism has opened up, between the liberal elite on the one hand, and the Trump supporters and sympathizers on the other. The typical Trump voter does not believe in a community of interest between themselves and the elite any more, and they think the elite started it. They may not have any opinion about whether Trump's big bang of tariffs is going to work as advertised, but they can see the usual suspects recoiling in horror, and for them that's a good sign.
There is even a kind of meta-defense of the tariffs, which is that at least it's change. All kinds of people have been complaining ineffectually about "neoliberalism" for a very long time. Now Trump actually did something that broke the rules in a big way. The meta-defense is that, however the "special operation" turns out economically, it broke the *political* logjam surrounding these economic megatrends (trade deficit, deindustrialization) that has existed for decades.
“The typical Trump voter does not believe in a community of interest between themselves and the elite any more, and they think the elite started it. They may not have any opinion about whether Trump's big bang of tariffs is going to work as advertised, but they can see the usual suspects recoiling in horror, and for them that's a good sign.”
Astute reading of this group, by the way. Derek’s rant is really just… foundational economics for an increasingly illiterate public. In one sense it doesn't matter whether people believe a hurricane is going to hit, or deny its very existence. It will hit all the same. Global impact means what it says on the tin. Let's run the experiment and find out, as the Real American elite running the show is determined to do.
I’m not just feeling liberated, I’m feeling ecstatic. The tariff announcement was the icing on a very delicious layer cake. Those layers included the emasculation of America’s most successful and most repugnant law firms. Who could have ever imagined that partners making seven and sometimes eight figure salaries would have caved so quickly or so thoroughly?
Another layer of that magnificent cake baked by Trump was the humiliation of America’s elite universities and their arrogant, over-educated but fundamentally stupid faculties. It’s hard to imagine a class of people more deserving abasement than this narcisstic crowd. It’s just too bad that the science departments at these institutions are paying most of the price while the humanities, social science and grievance studies faculties (who’s work is mostly useless) get to shout obscenities from the peanut gallery.
It’s also been delightful watching the panic spreading amongst the denizens of the establishment press as Trump decides who can fly and who’s excluded from Air Force One, who sits where in the White House Press Room and who the designated pool reporter is. As these pampered liars watch their jobs disappear only to be replaced by average Joes on Twitter and Substack, you can see them wondering whether spending a hundred thousand dollars on their masters degrees in journalism from Columbia and other similar schools was really a wise investment.
But the most exhilarating part of the Trump experience so far has been watching the panic of federal employees as they’re being frog walked out of their former offices (which they seldom visited anyway), boxes of their personal belongings in hand.
Lets not forget how these employees reacted as hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of manufacturing workers watched their good paying jobs migrate to China, Mexico and other venues due South and due West. Most of those government workers couldn’t have cared less. The sound of their indifference was deafening. They didn’t care about the drug abuse, the family breakup or the total destruction of once thriving communities. The trade policies that shipped American jobs overseas simply didn’t matter to them.
When Biden invited millions of illegal immigrants to come to our country, those federal workers didn’t care that those immigrants lowered the wages of the few jobs the laid off manufacturing workers might have gotten. After all, there was no risk that the government would hire illegal aliens to replace them. As working class men by the millions saw their lives destroyed, those federal workers happily celebrated “bring your daughters to work day.”
As they sipped their over-priced coffee from Starbucks, they watched what was happening to their fellow Americans with indifference and sometimes with disdain.
Well, paybacks a bitch. What goes around comes around. Trump made a promise to the working class; “I am your retribution.” It’s a promise, thank goodness, that he’s kept.
Federal workers are getting to experience exactly what those formerly middle class manufacturing workers experienced. Now they can find out what’s it’s like to go from a job that allowed you to support your family to a job flipping burgers on the late shift at McDonalds or stacking shelves at the local Walmart.
The mainstream press will bemoan all of this purely out of class solidarity. Just as they were and are indifferent to the travails of those without a college education, reporters and pundits have empathy for their fellow college graduates, even those who never attended Ivy League Schools. The press will work over time to convince the public that firing these workers will be calamitous for government efficiency. What I suspect they’re afraid of in their heart of hearts is that when all is said and done, the firing of all these workers won’t have any consequences at all.
Which brings us to tariffs. For a hundred years the Democratic Party was the party supporting tariffs. For decades, the Democratic Party believed in discouraging low-wage immigrants from competing with American workers. From the 1950s the Democratic Party was the party that was pro-peace and anti-war. Then Bill Clinton (with an assist from Bob Rubin and Larry Summers) came along and decided to change direction.
Taking a page out of the Republican playbook, Clinton riffed on Nixon’s comment that “we are all Keynesians now” and decided “we are all neo-liberals now.” The Democrats embraced GATT and later the WTO. They welcomed China into the community of nations and they concluded that free trade would make the economic pie bigger.
In a sense they were right; it did make the economic pie bigger but while the college educated knowledge workers gorged themselves, there weren’t even crumbs left for the non-college educated working class. Their communities were destroyed; for millions, their lives were destroyed. That’s the system that Claire Berlinski is celebrating as she bemoans the demise of neoliberalism.
What we are witnessing is Donald Trump telling the hyper-educated classes to go f$&k themselves. He’s destroying the neoliberal system that enriched them while destroying the prospects of working people. He’s decided to kill a system that acts like an upward funnel of wealth from people who work with their hands to people who work sitting on their backsides. Adam Garfinkle, in the unlikely event that you’re reading this, millions of Trump supporters are elated at this turn of events. Our neurons are simply drenched in dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin.
It’s quite possible that Trump’s tariffs will result in slower economic growth but if it results in even a modest redistribution of wealth to the most maligned sectors of society it will have been worth it. In the meantime, watching the panic of the educated elites is such a magnificent spectacle that theres almost no words for it.
And to make things even better, Trump is not only destroying neoliberalism, he’s destroying globalism so thoroughly that when Americans finally tire of Trumpism (which they surely will), the global international order will be difficult or impossible to resurrect.
"Our neurons are simply drenched in dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin."
The truest part of what you write, WigWam. And all else - literally all the post-facto rationalizations, every worldview adjustment - flow from maximizing that rush. A teachable moment. Thank you for the clarifying comment.
You feel how you feel - it’s pointless to criticise that. But WHY do you feel this way in response to federal workers being fired? Industry offshored to increase private profits. What do federal workers have to do with that?
Federal employees watched millions of non-college educated manufacturing workers and miners lose their jobs, their families and their dignity with utter indifference. Many believed that these workers suffered their cruel fate because the fact that they were uneducated made them economically disposable.
These federal workers understood that they would never need to worry that illegal immigrants would drive down their wages in the same way that illegal inmigrants drove down the wages of less educated workers. After all, the federal government would never hire illegal immigrants.
Most federal workers are college graduates. In fact, 52 percent have bachelor degrees and 22 percent have advanced degrees. They never worried that they would be dispensable in the way less educated workers were because they believed that their status as highly educated would protect them. They believed that their educational status made them indispensable.
They were wrong.
Karma is a bitch. They watched other Americans have their lives destroyed from their perch as junior members of the elites; courtesans really.
This comment reeks of narcissistic injury. You poor thing you
Burn it all down. That will fix everything, particularly your precious dignity, right? It won’t tho. Once the smoke clears, you won’t be satisfied, just eager for more senseless destruction.
In 1990 there were around 17.7 million manufacturing jobs in the United States; by 2000 that number had decreased a bit to 17.3 million. When Joe Biden became President in 2021 there were a mere 12.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States; when he left office, the number was about the same. The CHIPS Act was supposed to help solve the problem. Maybe there hasn’t been enough time yet for it to have an impact or maybe, without tariffs, it won’t make much of a difference; perhaps it will take a bit longer to tell.
If by the time Trump leaves office (presumably about four years from now) the number of manufacturing jobs ticks up moderately (let’s say five to ten percent or so) I would consider that to be a win. If the tariffs result in the number of those jobs going up while decreasing the number of jobs typically held by the college educated, that would be fine with me.
If Apple (and similar companies) modestly increases the number of products made in the United States, I would consider that a win. If there was an appreciable increase in the number of pharmaceutical products (including pharmaceutical components) produced in the United States, that would be a big win too.
What does it say about American sovereignty when our medicines, aluminum and even components critical to our defense industries are mostly produced by our biggest geopolitical adversary? That’s the world that neoliberal elites have delivered to us and continue to support.
One of the comments above, ridiculed the idea that America should aspire to return the jobs of “sock-stitchers” to the United States. The garment industry will probably never return but I think there’s plenty of dignity that comes from work in the garment industry. Maybe I feel this way because three of my grandparents were garment workers who were proud members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). College educated elites may believe that stitching socks is a contemptible profession; I don’t.
Many Trump opponents simply don’t get it. They call him “far right” but that merely demonstrates how vacuous they are. In fact, Trump is this generations FDR. He’s socially moderate, he’s not a war-monger and he’s a champion for the working class. Trump’s policies are the policies that Democrats once endorsed and establishment Republicans hated. Then Bill Clinton(who I foolishly voted for) decided that the Democratic Party needed to join the GOP in celebrating neoliberalism.
The reaction of Trump’s opponents has been as hysterical as the reaction of FDR’s opponents in the last century. Judges did everything they could to stymie FDR and his New Deal policies. Judges are doing everything they can to stymie Trump and his MAGA policies.
Does all of this sound socialistic to you? I hadn’t thought of that. But you put me in mind of something, Tom. There’s an old anthem that helped the United Mineworkers organize the oppressed workers in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1931. The song, which has become a classic for the American labor movement, asks “which side are you on, which side are you on?” If you’re inclined to spend less than 3 minutes, Tom, you can listen to it here.
With his tariff regime, Trump has demonstrated that he’s on the side of American workers while his college educated opponents are on the side of those who hate working class people or don’t care about them one way or the other.
Now that I’ve answered your question, Tom, maybe you will indulge me by answering a question I have for you. Do you care to tell us which side you’re on?
Thanks for a clear anwer, Wigwag! First things first: I saw Billy Bragg a few times in the 80s and 90s and he used to play a fine version of "Which Side Are You On?"
I live on the edge of Yorkshire's last active coalfield (which finally shut down over a decade ago). One of my sons is a keen tuba player and around here, brass band music is inextricably linked to mining via colliery bands, so I've been up to the Durham Miners' Gala a few times where all the bands march under their National Union of Mineworkers chapter banners and even heard Jeremy Corbyn speak there in 2019. You get a flavour here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr8_r0iQSag
If I have to pick a side, I'll side with the workers. Who may or may not work in factories (miners surely didn't) and may or may not be well-served by their unions (in the NUM strike of 1984, though there were very real grievances with nationalised management, I think they were badly let down by strategically clueless and grandstanding union leadership).
Now, about Socialism, the Labour Theory of Value and the exaltated status of "material production" -- more soon...
This is the most honest statement I’ve seen here supporting autarky. It’s emotional and not logical but honest.
For example tariffs are more Hoover than FDR, and US manufacturing output has increased since 2000 with 5 million fewer employees because productivity has skyrocketed.
But the background explains a lot of what middle American boomers feel.
To say my comment supports autarky is an exaggeration. It does support a mercantilist approach to international trade that in many respects mirrors the mercantilism practiced by China and Germany.
I agree (in part) with what Ross Douthat said in today’s New York Time.
“First, the goal is to revitalize American manufacturing, our capacity to build at home and export to the world. The global free trade system that took shape in the late 20th century served the American empire and American G.D.P. but at the expense of America’s earlier role as a manufacturing powerhouse — and because manufacturing jobs were such an important source of blue-collar male employment, at the expense of the working-class social fabric.
Meanwhile, over time, our manufacturing base didn’t just move overseas, it moved into the territory of our greatest rival, the People’s Republic of China. So rebuilding industry in America has two potential benefits even if it sacrifices some of the efficiencies offered by global trade. Factory jobs fill a particular socioeconomic niche that’s been filled instead by drugs, decline, despair. And having a real manufacturing base is essential if we’re going to be locked into great power competition for decades to come.”
I don’t agree with everything Douthat said. If you’re inclined, you can read the rest here.
I think the arrogance of our new rulers, the knowledge based clerisy, has produced a well deserved backlash. They ignored (and in some cases belittled) the travails of the working class attributing their economic failure to the fact that they were unintellectual deplorables (Hillary Clinton). The ruling class concluded that they were little more than gun-slingers and religion clingers (Obama). Mitt Romney suggested that they were the 47 percent who chose to be economic leeches.
At last, thanks to Trump, the shoe is on the other foot. What the intellectual class is discovering is that its economic prosperity has little to do with intellectual acuity and everything to do with government subsidies.
Federal workers rely exclusively on the government for their wages. Academics rely tremendously on government subsidies to the universities that employ them.
Doctors rely on massive government subsidies too. All residency training in the United States is paid for by Medicare (most people don’t know that). 48 percent of healthcare spending is paid for by the federal government.
Many lawyers and not a small number of accountants make their living interpreting, arguing and parsing tens of thousands of arcane federal rules.
Even parts of the press rely on federal subsidies. That’s why there was so much angst when Trump cut funding to Radio Free Europe or whatever its modern incarnation is called. It’s why Trump’s threats to cut funding to NPR and PBS has inspired mass hysteria.
It’s been quite a shock to the intellectual classes to discover that their prosperity wasn’t facilitated by their superior intellect but by federal tax dollars.
They are about to experience and are already beginning to experience the same economic shock that factory workers and miners experienced in the late 20th century. His policies may or may not work, but Trump is defending what the intellectual classes presumed were society’s losers. Ironically, they’re the losers now. It explains their hysteria.
There’s one more aspect to this that should not go unmentioned. Neoliberalism has a kissing cousin; neoconservatism. The neoconservatives gave us the wars in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. The United States lost all of those wars. We were defeated by a group of rag-tag gorilla fighters many of whom never graduated from the sixth grade.
We wasted trillions of dollars all for nothing. But it’s worse than that. Where did the soldiers in those wars come from? A huge number enlisted because they had no other way to seek gainful employment. Neoliberal policies shipped all the jobs they might otherwise have gotten to China, Mexico and so many other foreign countries that most Americans know nothing about. Thousands of those soldiers came home in body bags. Many more came home without arms and legs. I’ve met many of them personally who came home as triple and even quadruple amputees.
Ask them whether it was worth it and they all give the same answer; “it was all for nothing.”
This is the reality delivered by global elites. How anyone can conclude that the time isn’t ripe for massive change is beyond me.
Your comment said nothing about export increases. The passage you reference doesn’t either.
Both mostly harken back to pre-Clinton low import times.
A mercantilist proposal would be a completely different post. It would focus on making export quality goods not employing low skilled males.
It would also be a completely different set of policies than massive tariffs. For example it might include accelerated depreciation for capital investment. It might emphasize government funding for robotics and IoT.
It’s not just massive tariffs. Trump wants to lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent which would undercut the corporate tax rates applied in many countries, especially in Europe. That sounds pretty mercantilist to me. A corporate tax rate that low, along with tariffs, just might have a powerful impact on luring companies back to the United States.
You suggest enhancing exports. It’s a good idea as long as it’s manufacturing goods we export not services. My goal is to benefit people who make tangible things not people who generate ideas
Trump’s tariffs also provide a major incentive for nations that have their own tariff barriers to American exports to lower those barriers. It’s just one more benefit of Trump’s approach.
My grandparents were garment workers also. So what. Not everyone fits neatly into your tidy little morality play of “elites” vs. the working class. I’ve spent much of my life on the margins. And Trump showing he’s “on their side” with these tariffs is such a joke. Crashing the global economy in service to a phony class solidarity gesture. Of course that isn’t really what this is about. He wants to put himself in a position to strong arm businesses and demand they bend the knee in exchange for selective exemptions. Ultimately he’s impoverishing his own voters to enrich himself. But many of you need to cling to his transparently absurd rationalizations because to cease doing so would mean acknowledging that you’re some of the biggest suckers who’ve ever lived.
The late Jude Wanniski put matters this way about 30 years ago. "Now I consider myself a free-trader, but I reject the idea that there should be no tariff on goods coming into the United States. Zero tariffs means zero revenue, and if we are going to have a government, we are going to have to have revenues. In other words, I believe our market should be open to all goods manufactured in the rest of the world, as long as those goods are environmentally sound. (We should import no “mad cows” or “hoof and mouth” livestock.) But as long as we tax American producers of goods who wish to bring their goods to our market, it seems reasonable to me that foreign producers contribute to the general fund." (JW)
You could have summarized all of that in one sentence: “Destroy the world to own the libs.” Bitter, stupid people who need someone else to blame for their problems and want to ruin civilization for themselves and everyone else because they’re bitter about their comparatively low status.
Nope, Trump isn’t destroying the world, he’s simply destroying the prospects of America’s ruling class. It’s no surprise that their reaction is hysterical. They fear (correctly) that for them it might be an extinction level event.
America's ruling class will be fine. It always is. The people whom your revolution will hurt most are precisely the people you claim to care about most.
You might be right. We will see. It is true that when the peasants show up at the palace with pitch forks, more often than not, they’re routed.
But I’ll tell you who won’t be fine; the ruling classes courtiers, aka federal workers. They’re experiencing the same turmoil that so many of their fellow Americans in the industrial heartland experienced. They were indifferent then, they won’t be indifferent now.
The press won’t be fine either. It’s not the tariffs that’s killing their profession. It’s good old creative destruction that’s characterized capitalism forever.
As I was growing up in the mid 1960s and early 1970s I would have never guessed that the highly educated would morph into one of the most venal ruling classes in American history. Surprisingly it happened. If nothing else the spectacle of their panic is highly enjoyable.
On another matter, Claire, did you see the videos of Orban repudiating the International Criminal Court while standing next to Netanyahu? Hungary will be the first European nation to withdraw from the ICC. How long do you think this wretched institution foisted on the world by European globalists has before it fades into irrelevancy?
Yes. I hope something can be done to help them. They deserve the help. The rest of the federal work force deserves what’s coming to them.
The United Auto Workers support the tariffs. So do the Steel workers. The people who genuflect to neoliberalism and hate the tariffs tend to live in places like Brookline, Newton and Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan and Bethesda, Maryland and Georgetown. That alone tells you most of what you need to know.
There isn’t really a “ruling class” in the way you seem to think there is. And a lot of the stuff Trump is doing is so stupid it’s basically like punching ourselves in the face so his drooling idiot cult followers can feel like he’s “fighting for them.” Where’s the upside in defunding vaccine research or levying massive tariffs on Vietnam? Is he trying create lots of new jobs for Americans who are dying to stitch socks? This is almost reminiscent of Lysenkoism. You people are fucking communists!
Your comment is silly, Claire. You’re right; I don’t want to stitch socks. I don’t want to crawl under sinks to fix leaky pipes either. I don’t want to climb utility polls to reattach high tension wires and I don’t want to haul shingles up on a roof. Working on an assembly line isn’t exactly my cup of tea either. I was never anxious to work the night shift at Walmart stacking the shelves with Fruit of the Loom underwear.
I’m very fortunate that I was able to choose my profession. But that doesn’t mean I think sock-stitching is undignified and it doesn’t mean that I think that job and the other jobs I mentioned shouldn’t be available for those trying to work their way into the middle class. Nor does it mean that I don’t think those jobs shouldn’t pay enough to support a family and it doesn’t mean that I believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to compete with less skilled workers and drive their wages down.
We can’t all do what you do Claire; (and I did before I retired) making a living sitting in front of a computer terminal. Workers who don’t have the opportunity to make a living while sitting on their backsides are entitled to make a decent living too.
Why are neoliberals so contemptuous of these workers? Why have they stacked the economy to work against them? Why have they shipped so many of the jobs that once paid them a living wage overseas? Why have they welcomed illegal immigrants to suppress their wages?
Do you care about any of this Claire? Do any of your loyal readers shouting Amen in the comment section of your Substack care?
Speaking of Karma, Claire, do you remember the Greek financial crisis of several years ago? Germany took every opportunity to humiliate Greece. Frau Merkel offered up one lecture after the next on the consequences of Greek profligacy. The Germans insisted that the Greeks beg for a bail out.
Germany’s behavior was particularly odious because it was Germany that lent Greece most of the money in the first place and made a 3 billion Euro profit on the deal. As the financial crisis caused bond rates to plummet, Germany saved somewhere around 100 billion Euros in borrowing costs.
Now, thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs, the shoes on the other foot. Greece will be only marginally impacted. In fact, of all the nations in the EU, few if any will be less impacted than Greece. Only about 5 percent of Greek exports go to the United States. For the most part, those exports consist of feta cheese, olive oil, canned fruit and tinned fish. Exports to the United States account for about one percent of the Greek GDP.
For Germany, it’s a different story. Of all the EU nations the negative impact of Trump’s tariffs will hit Germany particularly hard. Exports to the United States represent three times as much of German GDP as exports from Greece do. The 20 percent tariffs imposed on the EU will be particularly consequential for the German economy. The impact of the 25 percent tariffs on imported automobiles will be devastating. Volkswagon, Mercedes Benz and BMW stand to lose $11 billion dollars.
Listening to the Germans squeal like stuck pigs should be particularly enlightening. After all, there are few nations that have been more mercantilist than Germany. They’re hardly in a position to criticize the United States for adopting the same mercantilist approach that they’ve utilized for decades.
The Greeks must be laughing it up as they ask, “who’s crying now?”
What goes around comes around, doesn’t it? I guess Donald Trump isn’t merely offering up retribution on behalf of the American working class. He’s providing a measure of retribution for Greece too.
"The Greeks must be laughing it up as they ask, 'who’s crying now?'"
As Claire's previously pointed out, one of the wonders of the worldwide web is that we needn't speculate so much about what Greeks might be feeling. We can look it up. For example:
Yes, the internet does reduce the need to speculate.
“According to recent research published in the bulletin of the Eurobank Analysis and Research Group, in the first 11 months of 2024 the weight of the US on the total of Greek exports of goods was around 4.8 percent or 2.2 billion at current prices. In the same period, the value of Greek imports of goods from the US amounted to €2 billion. Therefore, the trade balance between Greece and the US was in surplus at €200 million.
Among the individual categories of goods, food and live animals recorded the largest surplus (€521.6 million), and fossil fuels and lubricants the largest deficit (-€399.0 million).
For the full year 2024, Greece’s merchandise exports to the US are expected to stand at 1.0 percent of GDP.”
You’ve raised concerns that resonate with many who feel bruised by globalization. And the dignity of hard work—in any form—is not in dispute. But let’s go point by point, with all due respect and a clear head:
On job dignity and "sock-stitching":
Absolutely—every job, from stitching socks to climbing utility poles, has dignity. But tariffs aren’t job creators; they’re job movers. They shuffle jobs around, sometimes from one country to another, sometimes from one industry to another—but usually at a cost to consumers, and often to workers, too. Tariffs make socks more expensive for everyone—including the people stitching them.
On illegal immigration depressing wages:
That’s a valid concern. But tariffs don’t address immigration. They don’t secure borders, and they don’t regulate labor markets. If anything, tariffs raise the cost of goods without raising wages meaningfully. The way to support working-class Americans is through wage subsidies, job retraining, and investments in communities—not blanket taxes on imports that hit low-income households hardest.
On the betrayal of working-class Americans by “neoliberals”:
You’re right that there was negligence—especially in not offering safety nets when jobs disappeared. But the trade liberalization of the 1990s and 2000s coincided with the greatest expansion of global prosperity in human history. It lifted billions out of poverty and gave Americans historically cheap goods. We failed to share those gains fairly at home—but the failure was political, not economic.
On Trump’s tariffs as economic retribution:
Revenge is emotionally satisfying, but economically ruinous. Trump’s tariffs are a blunt instrument that punishes not just German carmakers but American autoworkers, suppliers, and consumers. A family in Michigan pays more for a car, not because it’s made better—but because it’s now artificially expensive. That isn’t justice; it’s self-harm.
On federal workers and “deserving what’s coming”:
Many federal workers are veterans, yes—but more than that, they are scientists, park rangers, engineers, postal workers, air traffic controllers. These aren’t palace courtiers. They’re ordinary people doing often thankless work. If the system is broken, the answer isn’t to break it more.
On the joy of watching elites squirm:
Schadenfreude is tempting. But in practice, the pain of these policies doesn't trickle up—it floods down. The Brookline academics may lose a few investment points; the guy in Ohio loses his job at the plant when parts prices spike. The Upper West Side can afford a $12 imported cheese. The family of five in Tulsa can’t.
On Greece and Germany as moral parables:
Perhaps the Germans were ungracious creditors. Perhaps Greece suffered unfairly. But this isn’t vengeance poker. The U.S. isn’t Germany, and Trump isn’t Greece’s avenging angel. Tariffs that hurt German automakers also hurt American buyers, suppliers, and allies. It’s not a global comeuppance—it’s a shared loss.
You speak for many who feel unseen by the system, and that frustration deserves attention. But let’s not confuse catharsis with strategy, or revenge with reform. If we care about the working class, we should want policies that work—not policies that hurt them in new and spectacular ways.
Fixing the problems of neoliberalism shouldn't mean embracing economic masochism. There are better ways forward than setting our own house on fire to make a point.
I’ve heard several people (I believe including Anne Applebaum) say that the authoritarian movement of the past that MAGA resembles the most is the Bolsheviks.
In Tom Friedman's column this morning, he writes that in China, people asked him if this was like the Cultural Revolution. It has in common a great deal with every highly ideological and zealous revolutionary movement. (His columns recently from China have been very good. Every so often he reminds me of the journalist he used to be.)
There were sensible but cynical tax and compliance related reasons why a number of billionaires backed Brexit. The billionaires backing Trump are not going to be happy. He is a toxic personality, has been for decades but somewhat smart people keep deluding themselves that they can use him.
"How could the nation that defeated the Nazis, cured polio, and put a man on the moon have become a country that does this in no more than a generation?"
There are probably a lot of answers to this question, but the main one is this: we are idiots. Not me, mind you. But the rest of y'all. No no, not y'all. I mean that collectively the right in the United States have become unmoored from two things that used to keep them fairly well grounded.
The first is sound conservative philosophy. That applies as much to economics as to anything. Most of my pro-Trump friends haven't the foggiest idea who Hayek, Friedman, nor Sowell are. The ones who do seem to have forgotten. As my 24 year old lesbian daughter who works the gun counter at a sporting good store says "They don't really beleive anything except what Trump tells them to beleive..." And I think that's true. They do not seem to know what it means to be a Conservative. They seem to think it means "fight against progressive ideology".
Second, my HarMAG friends seem to have lost touch with sound Christian doctrine. The American evangelical Christian church is largely devoid of anything resembling discipleship. They are evangelized, but not catechized. They seem to think that the Great Commission is fulfilled if we elect an autocratic president who will Make America Great Again by holding an Easter service on the White House lawn while incarcerating any brown person who looks suspicious.
So...ya know...
"Another reason is that America is just emerging from a period of popular unrest, in which crazy ideologies of all stripes got far more buy-in than they should have."
Absolutely this. I am not even remotely Right and even I can see that there are ideologies mainly from the very progressive left that have diluted some of the more common issues that would normally draw people together as a voting bloc and instead created distraction and fragmentation that has seen (on both the right and the left) each side bury themselves in internal arguments that serve no one. Either that or they have just pretended it isn't happening and gone along with the trendy issues for the sake of just defeating Trump/election Trump. Clearly this doesn't work.
What a great introduction of bringing understanding into a - at the moment - not understandable world.
The multi polar world is happening whether anyone likes it or not just because there are multiple geographic areas with lots of money and opinions. It’s not stoppable
SO much liberation....
It may not be stupidity alone—but rather a troubling tendency to replace economic understanding with ideology, even when the evidence resists it.
Noah Smith suggests that Trump’s aggressive tariff regime—like the 25% auto duties and sweeping trade actions against allies—amounts to a form of intentional economic self-harm. Granted, some might argue that the trade deficit is a sign of American vulnerability. But Smith counters that it is, in fact, a byproduct of the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency. Other countries must acquire dollars to trade and invest, which means they sell goods to the U.S. and funnel those dollars back into American assets. To run a trade surplus would be to surrender that global position—an outcome few serious economists view as desirable.
Of course, skepticism toward globalization and neoliberal trade policies isn’t unfounded. Factory towns hollowed out. Inequality grew. These were real harms. But Smith argues that the diagnosis has now eclipsed the facts: the belief that free trade “failed” the country has become orthodoxy on both the populist right and the progressive left, despite mounting evidence that the benefits outweighed the costs. The tariffs won’t bring back manufacturing, he warns; they will bring higher prices, slower growth, and a reduced voice for the U.S. in shaping the global order. The tragedy is not just economic miscalculation—it’s that a nation as rich and capable as America is doing this to itself, in the belief that it has already fallen.
He festers always in aggrieved-victim complex, dragging our nation around in revenge mode. Remember, this “Mark Burnett businessman figment of media hype” declared bankruptcy 6 times and routinely shafted the working man in his prior life as heir to daddy’s fortune. We’re living in a cartoon with an evil villain.
The people need to rise and remind MAGA-Congress and billionaire-owned SCOTUS to do their jobs — CHECK POWER.
I note that the voices we hear declaring this to be an unthinkable act that will lead to disaster, are all rather well-off and embedded in the system. They're probably not worrying whether they will still be paying off their mortgage after they have retired, and they are definitely not worrying about how to afford next week's groceries.
It's not the end of the world and it's not even the end of world trade. It is the US adopting a different and much more combative approach to trade negotiations, in service of a philosophy that wants to eliminate the country's trade deficits - that's it. Modern economic history is a series of shocks of various kinds - Nixon departing the gold standard, Volcker hiking interest rates to get rid of stagflation, the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis, to say nothing of 2020s disruptions. Whether this goes well or badly, I strongly doubt it's going to be some kind of decisive derailment of the global economy surpassing all that came before.
Sigh. It’s exactly those who are worried about grocery prices that ought to be the most worried, Mitchell. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oRWswqmFl7Q
I thought you were going to link to something about the Hands Off demonstrations, but it's just another elite pundit with a book to sell... The guy works for The Atlantic, they oppose anything Trump does apriori, except perhaps if he bombs an enemy of Israel. (Maybe *that's* why Trump's people invited Jeffrey Goldberg to join the "Houthi PC Small Group", they actually hoped for some positive coverage?)
I'm not saying that ordinary people will be untouched if this does go wrong. I'm just observing that the public outcry is led by a very different kind of person. There's a figure going around that 50% of American stocks are held by 1% of the population. The pundits, experts, journalists, academics, politicians who chorused in horror - most of them belong to that 1%, I'm sure. Their material incentive to protest Trump's trade policy is different from that of the ordinary people: their incentive is to preserve the value of their financial assets.
They would argue that this is a situation in which everyone sinks or swims together - in fact Derek Thompson says exactly that in the interview above - that crashing the stock market will make it harder for young people to get a job. However, this is one of those areas in which an abyss of immovable skepticism has opened up, between the liberal elite on the one hand, and the Trump supporters and sympathizers on the other. The typical Trump voter does not believe in a community of interest between themselves and the elite any more, and they think the elite started it. They may not have any opinion about whether Trump's big bang of tariffs is going to work as advertised, but they can see the usual suspects recoiling in horror, and for them that's a good sign.
There is even a kind of meta-defense of the tariffs, which is that at least it's change. All kinds of people have been complaining ineffectually about "neoliberalism" for a very long time. Now Trump actually did something that broke the rules in a big way. The meta-defense is that, however the "special operation" turns out economically, it broke the *political* logjam surrounding these economic megatrends (trade deficit, deindustrialization) that has existed for decades.
“The typical Trump voter does not believe in a community of interest between themselves and the elite any more, and they think the elite started it. They may not have any opinion about whether Trump's big bang of tariffs is going to work as advertised, but they can see the usual suspects recoiling in horror, and for them that's a good sign.”
Astute reading of this group, by the way. Derek’s rant is really just… foundational economics for an increasingly illiterate public. In one sense it doesn't matter whether people believe a hurricane is going to hit, or deny its very existence. It will hit all the same. Global impact means what it says on the tin. Let's run the experiment and find out, as the Real American elite running the show is determined to do.
The most sensible comment of this thread.
I’m not just feeling liberated, I’m feeling ecstatic. The tariff announcement was the icing on a very delicious layer cake. Those layers included the emasculation of America’s most successful and most repugnant law firms. Who could have ever imagined that partners making seven and sometimes eight figure salaries would have caved so quickly or so thoroughly?
Another layer of that magnificent cake baked by Trump was the humiliation of America’s elite universities and their arrogant, over-educated but fundamentally stupid faculties. It’s hard to imagine a class of people more deserving abasement than this narcisstic crowd. It’s just too bad that the science departments at these institutions are paying most of the price while the humanities, social science and grievance studies faculties (who’s work is mostly useless) get to shout obscenities from the peanut gallery.
It’s also been delightful watching the panic spreading amongst the denizens of the establishment press as Trump decides who can fly and who’s excluded from Air Force One, who sits where in the White House Press Room and who the designated pool reporter is. As these pampered liars watch their jobs disappear only to be replaced by average Joes on Twitter and Substack, you can see them wondering whether spending a hundred thousand dollars on their masters degrees in journalism from Columbia and other similar schools was really a wise investment.
But the most exhilarating part of the Trump experience so far has been watching the panic of federal employees as they’re being frog walked out of their former offices (which they seldom visited anyway), boxes of their personal belongings in hand.
Lets not forget how these employees reacted as hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of manufacturing workers watched their good paying jobs migrate to China, Mexico and other venues due South and due West. Most of those government workers couldn’t have cared less. The sound of their indifference was deafening. They didn’t care about the drug abuse, the family breakup or the total destruction of once thriving communities. The trade policies that shipped American jobs overseas simply didn’t matter to them.
When Biden invited millions of illegal immigrants to come to our country, those federal workers didn’t care that those immigrants lowered the wages of the few jobs the laid off manufacturing workers might have gotten. After all, there was no risk that the government would hire illegal aliens to replace them. As working class men by the millions saw their lives destroyed, those federal workers happily celebrated “bring your daughters to work day.”
As they sipped their over-priced coffee from Starbucks, they watched what was happening to their fellow Americans with indifference and sometimes with disdain.
Well, paybacks a bitch. What goes around comes around. Trump made a promise to the working class; “I am your retribution.” It’s a promise, thank goodness, that he’s kept.
Federal workers are getting to experience exactly what those formerly middle class manufacturing workers experienced. Now they can find out what’s it’s like to go from a job that allowed you to support your family to a job flipping burgers on the late shift at McDonalds or stacking shelves at the local Walmart.
The mainstream press will bemoan all of this purely out of class solidarity. Just as they were and are indifferent to the travails of those without a college education, reporters and pundits have empathy for their fellow college graduates, even those who never attended Ivy League Schools. The press will work over time to convince the public that firing these workers will be calamitous for government efficiency. What I suspect they’re afraid of in their heart of hearts is that when all is said and done, the firing of all these workers won’t have any consequences at all.
Which brings us to tariffs. For a hundred years the Democratic Party was the party supporting tariffs. For decades, the Democratic Party believed in discouraging low-wage immigrants from competing with American workers. From the 1950s the Democratic Party was the party that was pro-peace and anti-war. Then Bill Clinton (with an assist from Bob Rubin and Larry Summers) came along and decided to change direction.
Taking a page out of the Republican playbook, Clinton riffed on Nixon’s comment that “we are all Keynesians now” and decided “we are all neo-liberals now.” The Democrats embraced GATT and later the WTO. They welcomed China into the community of nations and they concluded that free trade would make the economic pie bigger.
In a sense they were right; it did make the economic pie bigger but while the college educated knowledge workers gorged themselves, there weren’t even crumbs left for the non-college educated working class. Their communities were destroyed; for millions, their lives were destroyed. That’s the system that Claire Berlinski is celebrating as she bemoans the demise of neoliberalism.
What we are witnessing is Donald Trump telling the hyper-educated classes to go f$&k themselves. He’s destroying the neoliberal system that enriched them while destroying the prospects of working people. He’s decided to kill a system that acts like an upward funnel of wealth from people who work with their hands to people who work sitting on their backsides. Adam Garfinkle, in the unlikely event that you’re reading this, millions of Trump supporters are elated at this turn of events. Our neurons are simply drenched in dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin.
It’s quite possible that Trump’s tariffs will result in slower economic growth but if it results in even a modest redistribution of wealth to the most maligned sectors of society it will have been worth it. In the meantime, watching the panic of the educated elites is such a magnificent spectacle that theres almost no words for it.
And to make things even better, Trump is not only destroying neoliberalism, he’s destroying globalism so thoroughly that when Americans finally tire of Trumpism (which they surely will), the global international order will be difficult or impossible to resurrect.
What more could we ask for?
"Our neurons are simply drenched in dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin."
The truest part of what you write, WigWam. And all else - literally all the post-facto rationalizations, every worldview adjustment - flow from maximizing that rush. A teachable moment. Thank you for the clarifying comment.
Glad to help.
You feel how you feel - it’s pointless to criticise that. But WHY do you feel this way in response to federal workers being fired? Industry offshored to increase private profits. What do federal workers have to do with that?
Federal employees watched millions of non-college educated manufacturing workers and miners lose their jobs, their families and their dignity with utter indifference. Many believed that these workers suffered their cruel fate because the fact that they were uneducated made them economically disposable.
These federal workers understood that they would never need to worry that illegal immigrants would drive down their wages in the same way that illegal inmigrants drove down the wages of less educated workers. After all, the federal government would never hire illegal immigrants.
Most federal workers are college graduates. In fact, 52 percent have bachelor degrees and 22 percent have advanced degrees. They never worried that they would be dispensable in the way less educated workers were because they believed that their status as highly educated would protect them. They believed that their educational status made them indispensable.
They were wrong.
Karma is a bitch. They watched other Americans have their lives destroyed from their perch as junior members of the elites; courtesans really.
Who’s laughing now?
That’s a lot of people to make this assumption about.
This comment reeks of narcissistic injury. You poor thing you
Burn it all down. That will fix everything, particularly your precious dignity, right? It won’t tho. Once the smoke clears, you won’t be satisfied, just eager for more senseless destruction.
"if it results in even a modest redistribution of wealth to the most maligned sectors of society it will have been worth it."
Do say more - how will that work, and how would we tell it had worked?
(sounds a bit like socialism to me...)
In 1990 there were around 17.7 million manufacturing jobs in the United States; by 2000 that number had decreased a bit to 17.3 million. When Joe Biden became President in 2021 there were a mere 12.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States; when he left office, the number was about the same. The CHIPS Act was supposed to help solve the problem. Maybe there hasn’t been enough time yet for it to have an impact or maybe, without tariffs, it won’t make much of a difference; perhaps it will take a bit longer to tell.
If by the time Trump leaves office (presumably about four years from now) the number of manufacturing jobs ticks up moderately (let’s say five to ten percent or so) I would consider that to be a win. If the tariffs result in the number of those jobs going up while decreasing the number of jobs typically held by the college educated, that would be fine with me.
If Apple (and similar companies) modestly increases the number of products made in the United States, I would consider that a win. If there was an appreciable increase in the number of pharmaceutical products (including pharmaceutical components) produced in the United States, that would be a big win too.
What does it say about American sovereignty when our medicines, aluminum and even components critical to our defense industries are mostly produced by our biggest geopolitical adversary? That’s the world that neoliberal elites have delivered to us and continue to support.
One of the comments above, ridiculed the idea that America should aspire to return the jobs of “sock-stitchers” to the United States. The garment industry will probably never return but I think there’s plenty of dignity that comes from work in the garment industry. Maybe I feel this way because three of my grandparents were garment workers who were proud members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). College educated elites may believe that stitching socks is a contemptible profession; I don’t.
Many Trump opponents simply don’t get it. They call him “far right” but that merely demonstrates how vacuous they are. In fact, Trump is this generations FDR. He’s socially moderate, he’s not a war-monger and he’s a champion for the working class. Trump’s policies are the policies that Democrats once endorsed and establishment Republicans hated. Then Bill Clinton(who I foolishly voted for) decided that the Democratic Party needed to join the GOP in celebrating neoliberalism.
The reaction of Trump’s opponents has been as hysterical as the reaction of FDR’s opponents in the last century. Judges did everything they could to stymie FDR and his New Deal policies. Judges are doing everything they can to stymie Trump and his MAGA policies.
Does all of this sound socialistic to you? I hadn’t thought of that. But you put me in mind of something, Tom. There’s an old anthem that helped the United Mineworkers organize the oppressed workers in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1931. The song, which has become a classic for the American labor movement, asks “which side are you on, which side are you on?” If you’re inclined to spend less than 3 minutes, Tom, you can listen to it here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BJH1Uolu7io
With his tariff regime, Trump has demonstrated that he’s on the side of American workers while his college educated opponents are on the side of those who hate working class people or don’t care about them one way or the other.
Now that I’ve answered your question, Tom, maybe you will indulge me by answering a question I have for you. Do you care to tell us which side you’re on?
Thanks for a clear anwer, Wigwag! First things first: I saw Billy Bragg a few times in the 80s and 90s and he used to play a fine version of "Which Side Are You On?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JALb4Z61xfU
I live on the edge of Yorkshire's last active coalfield (which finally shut down over a decade ago). One of my sons is a keen tuba player and around here, brass band music is inextricably linked to mining via colliery bands, so I've been up to the Durham Miners' Gala a few times where all the bands march under their National Union of Mineworkers chapter banners and even heard Jeremy Corbyn speak there in 2019. You get a flavour here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr8_r0iQSag
If I have to pick a side, I'll side with the workers. Who may or may not work in factories (miners surely didn't) and may or may not be well-served by their unions (in the NUM strike of 1984, though there were very real grievances with nationalised management, I think they were badly let down by strategically clueless and grandstanding union leadership).
Now, about Socialism, the Labour Theory of Value and the exaltated status of "material production" -- more soon...
This is the most honest statement I’ve seen here supporting autarky. It’s emotional and not logical but honest.
For example tariffs are more Hoover than FDR, and US manufacturing output has increased since 2000 with 5 million fewer employees because productivity has skyrocketed.
But the background explains a lot of what middle American boomers feel.
To say my comment supports autarky is an exaggeration. It does support a mercantilist approach to international trade that in many respects mirrors the mercantilism practiced by China and Germany.
I agree (in part) with what Ross Douthat said in today’s New York Time.
“First, the goal is to revitalize American manufacturing, our capacity to build at home and export to the world. The global free trade system that took shape in the late 20th century served the American empire and American G.D.P. but at the expense of America’s earlier role as a manufacturing powerhouse — and because manufacturing jobs were such an important source of blue-collar male employment, at the expense of the working-class social fabric.
Meanwhile, over time, our manufacturing base didn’t just move overseas, it moved into the territory of our greatest rival, the People’s Republic of China. So rebuilding industry in America has two potential benefits even if it sacrifices some of the efficiencies offered by global trade. Factory jobs fill a particular socioeconomic niche that’s been filled instead by drugs, decline, despair. And having a real manufacturing base is essential if we’re going to be locked into great power competition for decades to come.”
I don’t agree with everything Douthat said. If you’re inclined, you can read the rest here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/opinion/trump-tariffs-theories.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I think the arrogance of our new rulers, the knowledge based clerisy, has produced a well deserved backlash. They ignored (and in some cases belittled) the travails of the working class attributing their economic failure to the fact that they were unintellectual deplorables (Hillary Clinton). The ruling class concluded that they were little more than gun-slingers and religion clingers (Obama). Mitt Romney suggested that they were the 47 percent who chose to be economic leeches.
At last, thanks to Trump, the shoe is on the other foot. What the intellectual class is discovering is that its economic prosperity has little to do with intellectual acuity and everything to do with government subsidies.
Federal workers rely exclusively on the government for their wages. Academics rely tremendously on government subsidies to the universities that employ them.
Doctors rely on massive government subsidies too. All residency training in the United States is paid for by Medicare (most people don’t know that). 48 percent of healthcare spending is paid for by the federal government.
Many lawyers and not a small number of accountants make their living interpreting, arguing and parsing tens of thousands of arcane federal rules.
Even parts of the press rely on federal subsidies. That’s why there was so much angst when Trump cut funding to Radio Free Europe or whatever its modern incarnation is called. It’s why Trump’s threats to cut funding to NPR and PBS has inspired mass hysteria.
It’s been quite a shock to the intellectual classes to discover that their prosperity wasn’t facilitated by their superior intellect but by federal tax dollars.
They are about to experience and are already beginning to experience the same economic shock that factory workers and miners experienced in the late 20th century. His policies may or may not work, but Trump is defending what the intellectual classes presumed were society’s losers. Ironically, they’re the losers now. It explains their hysteria.
There’s one more aspect to this that should not go unmentioned. Neoliberalism has a kissing cousin; neoconservatism. The neoconservatives gave us the wars in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. The United States lost all of those wars. We were defeated by a group of rag-tag gorilla fighters many of whom never graduated from the sixth grade.
We wasted trillions of dollars all for nothing. But it’s worse than that. Where did the soldiers in those wars come from? A huge number enlisted because they had no other way to seek gainful employment. Neoliberal policies shipped all the jobs they might otherwise have gotten to China, Mexico and so many other foreign countries that most Americans know nothing about. Thousands of those soldiers came home in body bags. Many more came home without arms and legs. I’ve met many of them personally who came home as triple and even quadruple amputees.
Ask them whether it was worth it and they all give the same answer; “it was all for nothing.”
This is the reality delivered by global elites. How anyone can conclude that the time isn’t ripe for massive change is beyond me.
Your comment said nothing about export increases. The passage you reference doesn’t either.
Both mostly harken back to pre-Clinton low import times.
A mercantilist proposal would be a completely different post. It would focus on making export quality goods not employing low skilled males.
It would also be a completely different set of policies than massive tariffs. For example it might include accelerated depreciation for capital investment. It might emphasize government funding for robotics and IoT.
It’s not just massive tariffs. Trump wants to lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent which would undercut the corporate tax rates applied in many countries, especially in Europe. That sounds pretty mercantilist to me. A corporate tax rate that low, along with tariffs, just might have a powerful impact on luring companies back to the United States.
You suggest enhancing exports. It’s a good idea as long as it’s manufacturing goods we export not services. My goal is to benefit people who make tangible things not people who generate ideas
Trump’s tariffs also provide a major incentive for nations that have their own tariff barriers to American exports to lower those barriers. It’s just one more benefit of Trump’s approach.
My grandparents were garment workers also. So what. Not everyone fits neatly into your tidy little morality play of “elites” vs. the working class. I’ve spent much of my life on the margins. And Trump showing he’s “on their side” with these tariffs is such a joke. Crashing the global economy in service to a phony class solidarity gesture. Of course that isn’t really what this is about. He wants to put himself in a position to strong arm businesses and demand they bend the knee in exchange for selective exemptions. Ultimately he’s impoverishing his own voters to enrich himself. But many of you need to cling to his transparently absurd rationalizations because to cease doing so would mean acknowledging that you’re some of the biggest suckers who’ve ever lived.
The late Jude Wanniski put matters this way about 30 years ago. "Now I consider myself a free-trader, but I reject the idea that there should be no tariff on goods coming into the United States. Zero tariffs means zero revenue, and if we are going to have a government, we are going to have to have revenues. In other words, I believe our market should be open to all goods manufactured in the rest of the world, as long as those goods are environmentally sound. (We should import no “mad cows” or “hoof and mouth” livestock.) But as long as we tax American producers of goods who wish to bring their goods to our market, it seems reasonable to me that foreign producers contribute to the general fund." (JW)
You could have summarized all of that in one sentence: “Destroy the world to own the libs.” Bitter, stupid people who need someone else to blame for their problems and want to ruin civilization for themselves and everyone else because they’re bitter about their comparatively low status.
Nope, Trump isn’t destroying the world, he’s simply destroying the prospects of America’s ruling class. It’s no surprise that their reaction is hysterical. They fear (correctly) that for them it might be an extinction level event.
America's ruling class will be fine. It always is. The people whom your revolution will hurt most are precisely the people you claim to care about most.
You might be right. We will see. It is true that when the peasants show up at the palace with pitch forks, more often than not, they’re routed.
But I’ll tell you who won’t be fine; the ruling classes courtiers, aka federal workers. They’re experiencing the same turmoil that so many of their fellow Americans in the industrial heartland experienced. They were indifferent then, they won’t be indifferent now.
The press won’t be fine either. It’s not the tariffs that’s killing their profession. It’s good old creative destruction that’s characterized capitalism forever.
As I was growing up in the mid 1960s and early 1970s I would have never guessed that the highly educated would morph into one of the most venal ruling classes in American history. Surprisingly it happened. If nothing else the spectacle of their panic is highly enjoyable.
On another matter, Claire, did you see the videos of Orban repudiating the International Criminal Court while standing next to Netanyahu? Hungary will be the first European nation to withdraw from the ICC. How long do you think this wretched institution foisted on the world by European globalists has before it fades into irrelevancy?
You realize that one out of three federal workers are veterans, don't you? https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-sweeping-doge-driven-cuts-093002624.html
Yes. I hope something can be done to help them. They deserve the help. The rest of the federal work force deserves what’s coming to them.
The United Auto Workers support the tariffs. So do the Steel workers. The people who genuflect to neoliberalism and hate the tariffs tend to live in places like Brookline, Newton and Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan and Bethesda, Maryland and Georgetown. That alone tells you most of what you need to know.
There isn’t really a “ruling class” in the way you seem to think there is. And a lot of the stuff Trump is doing is so stupid it’s basically like punching ourselves in the face so his drooling idiot cult followers can feel like he’s “fighting for them.” Where’s the upside in defunding vaccine research or levying massive tariffs on Vietnam? Is he trying create lots of new jobs for Americans who are dying to stitch socks? This is almost reminiscent of Lysenkoism. You people are fucking communists!
So you think sock-stitching is a profession that no intelligent American could think is dignified or worthwhile.
Spoken like a true elitist.
It’s never going to be a living wage paid option in America. Or anywhere in the West. Even with tariffs. I think.
I don’t disagree. The garment industry, like the shoe industry is gone for good.
You go first, WigWag. Do it for a year and report back.
Your comment is silly, Claire. You’re right; I don’t want to stitch socks. I don’t want to crawl under sinks to fix leaky pipes either. I don’t want to climb utility polls to reattach high tension wires and I don’t want to haul shingles up on a roof. Working on an assembly line isn’t exactly my cup of tea either. I was never anxious to work the night shift at Walmart stacking the shelves with Fruit of the Loom underwear.
I’m very fortunate that I was able to choose my profession. But that doesn’t mean I think sock-stitching is undignified and it doesn’t mean that I think that job and the other jobs I mentioned shouldn’t be available for those trying to work their way into the middle class. Nor does it mean that I don’t think those jobs shouldn’t pay enough to support a family and it doesn’t mean that I believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to compete with less skilled workers and drive their wages down.
We can’t all do what you do Claire; (and I did before I retired) making a living sitting in front of a computer terminal. Workers who don’t have the opportunity to make a living while sitting on their backsides are entitled to make a decent living too.
Why are neoliberals so contemptuous of these workers? Why have they stacked the economy to work against them? Why have they shipped so many of the jobs that once paid them a living wage overseas? Why have they welcomed illegal immigrants to suppress their wages?
Do you care about any of this Claire? Do any of your loyal readers shouting Amen in the comment section of your Substack care?
No it’s great. Maybe we should also go back to washing our laundry by hand so the Trumpers can feel valued and have something to do.
WigWag's got that "Stalinist after the invasion of Hungary" vibe going today.
Speaking of Karma, Claire, do you remember the Greek financial crisis of several years ago? Germany took every opportunity to humiliate Greece. Frau Merkel offered up one lecture after the next on the consequences of Greek profligacy. The Germans insisted that the Greeks beg for a bail out.
Germany’s behavior was particularly odious because it was Germany that lent Greece most of the money in the first place and made a 3 billion Euro profit on the deal. As the financial crisis caused bond rates to plummet, Germany saved somewhere around 100 billion Euros in borrowing costs.
Now, thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs, the shoes on the other foot. Greece will be only marginally impacted. In fact, of all the nations in the EU, few if any will be less impacted than Greece. Only about 5 percent of Greek exports go to the United States. For the most part, those exports consist of feta cheese, olive oil, canned fruit and tinned fish. Exports to the United States account for about one percent of the Greek GDP.
For Germany, it’s a different story. Of all the EU nations the negative impact of Trump’s tariffs will hit Germany particularly hard. Exports to the United States represent three times as much of German GDP as exports from Greece do. The 20 percent tariffs imposed on the EU will be particularly consequential for the German economy. The impact of the 25 percent tariffs on imported automobiles will be devastating. Volkswagon, Mercedes Benz and BMW stand to lose $11 billion dollars.
Listening to the Germans squeal like stuck pigs should be particularly enlightening. After all, there are few nations that have been more mercantilist than Germany. They’re hardly in a position to criticize the United States for adopting the same mercantilist approach that they’ve utilized for decades.
The Greeks must be laughing it up as they ask, “who’s crying now?”
What goes around comes around, doesn’t it? I guess Donald Trump isn’t merely offering up retribution on behalf of the American working class. He’s providing a measure of retribution for Greece too.
"The Greeks must be laughing it up as they ask, 'who’s crying now?'"
As Claire's previously pointed out, one of the wonders of the worldwide web is that we needn't speculate so much about what Greeks might be feeling. We can look it up. For example:
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1266044/greece-braces-for-double-whammy-from-trump-tariffs/
And if the English-language version isn't authentic enough for you, it's also possible to use a translation app on the Greek version:
https://www.kathimerini.gr/
E Kathimerini (Η Καθημερινή) has a reputation as one of Greece's more right-leaning papers, incidentally.
Yes, the internet does reduce the need to speculate.
“According to recent research published in the bulletin of the Eurobank Analysis and Research Group, in the first 11 months of 2024 the weight of the US on the total of Greek exports of goods was around 4.8 percent or 2.2 billion at current prices. In the same period, the value of Greek imports of goods from the US amounted to €2 billion. Therefore, the trade balance between Greece and the US was in surplus at €200 million.
Among the individual categories of goods, food and live animals recorded the largest surplus (€521.6 million), and fossil fuels and lubricants the largest deficit (-€399.0 million).
For the full year 2024, Greece’s merchandise exports to the US are expected to stand at 1.0 percent of GDP.”
See,
https://greekreporter.com/2025/04/03/impact-us-tariffs-greece-economy/
The Germans who ridiculed the Greeks will be impacted far more severely by Trump’s tariffs than the Greeks will.
What goes around, comes around.
You’ve raised concerns that resonate with many who feel bruised by globalization. And the dignity of hard work—in any form—is not in dispute. But let’s go point by point, with all due respect and a clear head:
On job dignity and "sock-stitching":
Absolutely—every job, from stitching socks to climbing utility poles, has dignity. But tariffs aren’t job creators; they’re job movers. They shuffle jobs around, sometimes from one country to another, sometimes from one industry to another—but usually at a cost to consumers, and often to workers, too. Tariffs make socks more expensive for everyone—including the people stitching them.
On illegal immigration depressing wages:
That’s a valid concern. But tariffs don’t address immigration. They don’t secure borders, and they don’t regulate labor markets. If anything, tariffs raise the cost of goods without raising wages meaningfully. The way to support working-class Americans is through wage subsidies, job retraining, and investments in communities—not blanket taxes on imports that hit low-income households hardest.
On the betrayal of working-class Americans by “neoliberals”:
You’re right that there was negligence—especially in not offering safety nets when jobs disappeared. But the trade liberalization of the 1990s and 2000s coincided with the greatest expansion of global prosperity in human history. It lifted billions out of poverty and gave Americans historically cheap goods. We failed to share those gains fairly at home—but the failure was political, not economic.
On Trump’s tariffs as economic retribution:
Revenge is emotionally satisfying, but economically ruinous. Trump’s tariffs are a blunt instrument that punishes not just German carmakers but American autoworkers, suppliers, and consumers. A family in Michigan pays more for a car, not because it’s made better—but because it’s now artificially expensive. That isn’t justice; it’s self-harm.
On federal workers and “deserving what’s coming”:
Many federal workers are veterans, yes—but more than that, they are scientists, park rangers, engineers, postal workers, air traffic controllers. These aren’t palace courtiers. They’re ordinary people doing often thankless work. If the system is broken, the answer isn’t to break it more.
On the joy of watching elites squirm:
Schadenfreude is tempting. But in practice, the pain of these policies doesn't trickle up—it floods down. The Brookline academics may lose a few investment points; the guy in Ohio loses his job at the plant when parts prices spike. The Upper West Side can afford a $12 imported cheese. The family of five in Tulsa can’t.
On Greece and Germany as moral parables:
Perhaps the Germans were ungracious creditors. Perhaps Greece suffered unfairly. But this isn’t vengeance poker. The U.S. isn’t Germany, and Trump isn’t Greece’s avenging angel. Tariffs that hurt German automakers also hurt American buyers, suppliers, and allies. It’s not a global comeuppance—it’s a shared loss.
You speak for many who feel unseen by the system, and that frustration deserves attention. But let’s not confuse catharsis with strategy, or revenge with reform. If we care about the working class, we should want policies that work—not policies that hurt them in new and spectacular ways.
Fixing the problems of neoliberalism shouldn't mean embracing economic masochism. There are better ways forward than setting our own house on fire to make a point.
I’ve heard several people (I believe including Anne Applebaum) say that the authoritarian movement of the past that MAGA resembles the most is the Bolsheviks.
In Tom Friedman's column this morning, he writes that in China, people asked him if this was like the Cultural Revolution. It has in common a great deal with every highly ideological and zealous revolutionary movement. (His columns recently from China have been very good. Every so often he reminds me of the journalist he used to be.)
Brexit was pretty stupid, though.... a similar idea: a country imposing economic sanctions on itself.
There were sensible but cynical tax and compliance related reasons why a number of billionaires backed Brexit. The billionaires backing Trump are not going to be happy. He is a toxic personality, has been for decades but somewhat smart people keep deluding themselves that they can use him.
I think a few years ago Sri Lanka tried banning conventional agriculture to move to organic-only. It did not go well.
Exactly the same idea, but they didn't take the whole world down with them..
I’m gonna liberate a bottle of rye tonight.
https://www.crownroyal.com/canadian-whisky/crown-royal-northern-harvest-rye
Wait! We haven't seen everything yet. He never ceases to amaze me. Every time I say he can't do anything more stupid, he does!
We're now at MAGA level: Jonestown. Worse than this, we do not survive.