Just because Trump was conceptually right about tariffs (but terribly wrong in how he executed them) doesn’t mean we should all freak out at any mention of them...
As a Wisconsinite, I'm not seeing the enthusiasm here that is absolutely essential for Harris to win this crucial swing state. Why? The messaging. We really need the campaign to address working class issues - as specifically as possible - and in unambiguous plain ass language.
We as Americans cannot afford to lose Wisconsin to Trump.
FT6 has sent over a million texts to WI. I am told otherwise, that even in red counties Trump enthusiasm is down. Same day registration is available at your polling place on Election Day if deadlines (below) are missed. Remember to bring ID or another proof of residence document.
Thousands of unregistered cheeseheads and sconnies trend Democratic. Registration deadlines for online and by mail (postmarked) for the General Presidential Election on November 5, 2024 is October 16, 2024 (20 days prior to the election).
You can register people in person at the clerk’s office through November 1, 2024.
Absentee ballot application deadline for the General Presidential Election is tbd.
In Wisconsin, you can pre-register to vote at 17 years old if you will be 18 by Election Day.
If you need help getting an ID, contact VoteRiders.org or call/text 1-844-338-8743.
Mail ballots should be mailed back at least a week prior to the election; or dropped off at an Early Voting site, or at ANY polling location on Election Day (no ID or waiting in line required). Ballots not received by 7pm on Election Day will not count.
We still have time to mitigate our 2020 losses and take our message to the diaspora. E.G. Uniontown, Waynesburg, Somerset, New Castle, Meadville, Sharon. Dubois Pa. Grand Rapids. Wausau, Green Bay, etc.
Target the message to them!
In 2020, Trump won my home county in Pennsyltucky by 65%. In others, 78%.
Trump won Waushara and Washington Counties, Wisconsin by 2/3. St. Clair County, Michigan by 64%.
She, and all Democrats, are working to restore the middle class, which has been ravaged by the policies of Reagan. The far right has long wanted to rid themselves of the Middle class, which is thorn in their side. But a strong middle class is necessary to maintain a stable Democracy. Biden started moving us from Reagan's economy based on economics, and back to one bases on Business as it should be.. Harris will continue that work. If they don't hear the message, they are not listening.
Damn, Thom, what an education. Thank you so much for this! I write a blog on Substack, but with only around 100 free subscribers. I quote you a lot. I feel like copying and pasting this entire blog on my Substack, and encouraging them to subscribe to your blog.
"The main goal of a tariff is to encourage Americans to buy the products of domestic — rather than foreign — manufacturing. For that to work, companies that may consider investing billions in factories here in the US need to know that the tariffs aren’t just a whim or election stunt like they were with Trump, but will be around for the coming years or even decades necessary to recover their initial billion-dollar investments in new manufacturing facilities."
I never worked at the ITC or served at the US DC International trade court, but I was an officer of the ABA and was in organizations that represented judges who heard those cases. https://www.usitc.gov/
I have not Shepardized their cases, but I bet that local communities, like disadvantaged Youngstown, Ohio have eve been parties in their cases although their fates are litigated there. Some of the cases involve patent and other technical evidence, and some of the judges have patent law backgrounds.
Ironically, I went to high school with a former commissioner, who I assume can care less about us locals.
The President of the United States is the primary negotiator of treaties with other countries, but the Senate must also ratify them:
The Senate must ratify treaties by a two-thirds supermajority vote.
Treaties become part of international law and are binding on the United States. The Treaty Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, establishes the process for ratifying treaties. The United States also uses executive agreements, which are binding international agreements that are not submitted to the Senate for advice and consent.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements create an international trade legal framework for 164 economies around the world. These Agreements cover goods, services, intellectual property, standards, investment and other issues that impact the flow of trade.
My position has been that negotiations should consider the effect on more than just finances. E.G. My home town was decimated when the Taft Tariff was removed, ultimately ending the manufacture of tin plate. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Payne-Aldrich-Tariff-Act
As Thom has documented, Reagan was a disaster. But with a smile on his face, he conned the Reagan Democrats he had screwed.
Another glorious example of why I am so glad I came across your site and get to read your wonderful essays. So much information, so much history, so much enlightenment!
This has special meaning to me as I worked in some of those factories in Ohio to get an education and move on to something else. Those who did not were, sadly, left behind under Reaganomics (or voodoo economics as we called it then). The jobs that helped me pay for my education are gone. The support for higher education has diminished significantly, and students now bear a crushing debt when they try to get the same education.
In retrospect, it all looks like a bad dream to get the country back to the gilded age and the roaring 1920’s - which ended up crushing most common people.
What if African countries could impose tariffs? Apparently they aren't allowed to do that by their "former" colonial masters, or the diamond trade would center on Kinshasa, not Brussels.
I guess that I have a question, then: how can a country with plentiful resources--gold, diamonds, cobalt, copious water and timber, and over 100 million people--be so poor? It can't be ascribed entirely to internal wars and corruption can it?
Of course it can. First throwing very different tribal groups together with arbitrary boundaries made no sense, but is what the colonizers could grab (even shooting the king of Katanga to get his territory ahead of a British expedition.) That laid the seeds for future conflicts. Then the Belgian king looted it to the point that it was a slave state, and it finally got so bad his own parliament took it away from him. But the Brussels government did almost nothing for the people and after suddenly pulling out and leaving the place in chaos the CIA apparently encouraged the murder of the one man who might have pulled together its very disparate people. Then the U.S. supported an anti-Communist dictator/kleptomaniac who took everything that wasn't nailed down and since he was overthrown it has again been in tribal warfare. The tough tropical climate doesn't help development either, but in any case what should be one of the richest countries in the world is now one of the poorest.
Thanks for your input. Patrice Lumumba is one of several elected leaders that we have removed forcefully for not being sufficiently pro-corporate. This and the other interventions you mentioned indicate that the problem with Congo is from outside, but they have internalized it. They are divided along ethnic lines (as are almost all large nations), but their one gift from colonization is having a lingua franca of French. If the West can not just recognize their sovereignty, but truly accept it, it would be a big help to their development. Congo should be on a par with Nigeria or Indonesia now.
Oh definitely, and keeping others in power like Mobutu or Papa Doc are examples of short-term thinking. Iran and Nicaragua are classic examples of backing "clients" while destroying alternatives, leading to terrible trouble down the road. Current US involvement in the Sahel also in my opinion is a dead end route, since while social conditions remain bad there the causes of ISIS and such groups will never go away. (It is the same as Gaza.) Killing them just makes more enemies; meanwhile Russia is grabbing the minerals in the Central African Republic and China is taking the infrastructure it builds when the countries there default. They practice neo-colonialism without the costs of war.
But the Congo has always had issues--it was given to Belgium, without any African input of course, because that was a small country and so avoided Britain and France disputing it. (They had already come close to war over the Nile Valley in Sudan.) Again, this is an example of how greedy and short-sighted decisions lead to long term problems, and the people always suffer.
Dictatorships have existed to steal the wealth of the citizens. Nothing like privatization of the wealth. What Putin has squandered on Ukraine is unbelievable.
Just a meandering thought but wouldn't it be great if tribes got together in a agreed peaceful convention and redrew their Countries borders according to the residents. Africa looks like how the Republicans were gerrymandering the USA. They need to come together with language and tribal affiliation of their own. I realize this would be extremely hard to do but it's better than maintaining Europe's arbitrary sectioning from the 1800's.
Ultimately, boundaries don't protect anybody, but they do reinforce suspicions of those who are different. What would be better for everyone would be not having leaders who exploit these suspicions to distract the people from the government's failures.
Manufacturing and tariffs are good for the nation, labor, and domestic economies. National finance is against labor being strong against their own interests. The balance of finance and labor interests is based on government control on the issues of the nation. The only way to create a majority middle class to uplift the lower class is tax policy to keep money becoming cheap by having a rate of more than 50% in business and a top tax rate of 94% but at least 50%. Europe learned FDR's tax policies success and adopted them because they work to make a nations population affluent keeping the super rich constrained to a group of a few. Such policies make mudsill a system of economic creation of unearned millionaires and billionaires through a majority of the population living in lower class incomes.
I had recently read a portion of today's Hartmann Report in Hartmann's book, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--And What We Can Do to Stop It." Chapter 4, A Middle-Class Primer, includes "Step Three: Protections for Working People," where Thom explains Hamilton's common sense plan to use tariffs. I highly recommend this 2013 book, which is more relevant today. Our library had a copy, and I listened to the audiobook. I found a used hard copy reasonably priced for my reference.
I'm looking forward to the new book, which will be released on October 8th. I'm not earning a commission for selling Hartmann's books, though. Lol.
As I recall from History class, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs sank the whole world into depression that lasted until 1939. It was 20% across the board or something. My grandfather shipped a cow to Winnipeg to slaughter and freight was more than the cow was worth. If Trump does even 10% across the board, could the same thing happen again?
Cannot argue with the history or the economic effects as stated, but who the hell wants to work in a factory? I know, because I grew up in a neighborhood with them and lots of factory workers.
That is a huge problem. Another is the equipment is not what it used to be. It can take some education and computer savvy for the jobs you are talking about.
In the meantime, people have been sold pipe-dreams about getting an education and having that education pay-off. If only that student debt also worked the way the Republicans wished it did.
Back to my original thought, these jobs are BORING. They are hard on your mind and body. My heart is with the UAW workers doing battle right now.
Boy is this complicated with all that has changed in the last four decades since the factory doors closed here!
Student Debt was intentionally meant to enslave future intellectuals financially. Yes it's worked great and currently they can't afford to get married, have children or buy a house.
Sadly Alis,in my opinion, manufacturing is about the only job non-thinkers like the cult can do. And God knows that we have more than our fair share of them. They just live to complain constantly and disrupt anyway! Either give them a manufacturing job or we'll have to have a civil war! Like this current election. They want to steal all of our stuff! Really!
I’m wondering why the arguments isn’t being made ( by the Dems) that if not for Bush and then Obama pumping federal funds into the economy in order to save the banks after the disastrous recession of 2007-08, the economy regained what was lost and continued to improve into the trump years until he was poorly prepared and unable to deal with the pandemic ( going so far to scrap an Executive order by Obama that organized a pandemic response group).
The economy in 2016 to 2020 was just a continued of the earlier response to the recession.
Oh, it is. Maybe not by the Harris campaign, but whenever Trump brags about his “greatest economy” someone will point out he inherited a stable, rising economy from Obama, which he was too witless to protect with competent leadership when the pandemic hit. But this article isn’t about the stock market…it’s about the loss of manufacturing jobs due to neoliberal trade policies.
Yes, the article is about the loss of manufacturing jobs and how tariffs when applied properly had prevented the Midwest from becoming a rust belt and I was simply tying it to the economy that surged from 2008 to 2020. We all remember trump visiting some plants in the Midwest that he promised to revitalize which eventually closed , jobs no longer available.
I just don’t see either the nominees or their surrogates talking about the recovery spilling into the trump administration.
As an aside, I lived in Washington during the Reagan period and I remember the reduction in force (RIF) , the emptying/closing of St Elizabeth’s Hospital ( psychiatric institute) and the effect on the community. Increased in hopelessness and unemployment. Some seemly the few dozen homes street people that we knew by name became an overwhelming problem that the city was unprepared for. Then improved under Clinton and now back to where we were in on the 80’s.
Here in one phenomenal article, we have an education in tariffs, which is also a history lesson, a lesson in international relations and national security, in neoliberal folly, and in economics, as well as at least one or two other things. One of the most important lessons is unintended but perfectly illustrated. Thom has demonstrated here, once again, why compulsory school attendance has been a total failure and a disaster for millions of students.
I believe I remember hearing about tariffs in high school. I was just smart enough to get by with a very superficial understanding and the ability to choose the correct choices on a test to pass a course without having any real knowledge and comprehension of the history, the economics, the logic, or the politics involved. When I graduated with a B+ average, I couldn’t have told you what the particulars are relative to tariffs if my life had depended upon it. In the one or two classes I had in college, the importance and specifics and the history of tariffs were a blur again, and I passed the course without a clue. My economics professor argued that over-population was not a problem because expansion was a good thing and technology and human ingenuity would always result in jobs, adequate food production, and security. That has worked out just swell, don’t you think?
Thom says that the people where tariffs mattered most, such as in the rust belt understand tariffs. I suspect that there are millions there who got through school just as I did, however, who have no idea why there are no decent jobs and why their choices are extremely limited. They didn’t go to school to answer such questions for themselves. They didn’t make the connection when the topic was presented to them as an abstract and academic subject. They faked it, and if they couldn’t fake it they may or may not have failed the course or dropped out. But they probably didn’t know tariffs from tiddley-winks.
Interest, initiative, and motivation cannot be manufactured in a school any more than products can be manufactured over the long term without a facility, raw materials, labor, and management. The information we need is in the article and in Thom’s books which are referenced in the article, which will lead to other books and original sources and research for students who are not demoralized, insulted, and infantilized. When “experts” condense it all down, homogenize, sterilize, and standardize it and students are spoon-fed their brilliant summaries in classes, it becomes so much mush and slush. As I repeat endlessly, education and coercion are antithetical. It would be wonderful if all students in school could read this article and get the full benefits, instead of learning about tariffs 60 years too late as I did. But we live in the real world. School is not the real world. Not even close. We've had it bass-ackwards for nearly two centuries. A President Harris cannot save us all by herself.
IHSus Christie Robert. Here you go again with your rant against public education.
Always bitchin, so tell us Robert, I've asked you this before and will continue asking until you answer
What is your solution
1.Universal illiteracy
2. Vouchers
3. Religious education
4. Pre 19th century were it was the responsility of the father to tutor the child, and if he lacked the means or died and left them orphans, the children grew up illiterate
Have you seen a doctor recently? You need medical attention urgently.
If someone points a gun to your head and threatens you, what is your alternative? Mine would be for the threat to be removed somehow so I could proceed as a free citizen in a free democracy and go about learning, living, and leaving others to do the same. I thought you were a genius. I was clearly mistaken. In colonial America, literacy was higher than it is today and books were in homes and people actually read them and prized them and the knowledge they got from them on their own initiative. I do not provide this information for you because you have proven yourself incapable of learning. School obviously didn't do you much good in the logic department. I hope that other people less obtuse and arrogant will happen to read what I write and be the better for it.
Again I ask you what is your solution to public schooling.
apparently you have none, all you have a is along bitching rant, to avoid the issue
Again Robert
What is your solution
1.Universal illiteracy
2. Vouchers
3. Religious education
4. Pre 19th century were it was the responsibility of the father to tutor the child, and if he lacked the means or died and left them orphans, the children grew up illiterate
You have no comment, because you have no answers. You are a seriously troubled person, all you have is a rant and rage against public education, but no answer, no alternative
I would take you seriously if you had an answer, a solution, a viable alternative, but you have none.
So public education is problematic, we all know that, but what is the alternative, what are the alternatives.
For that you have no answer, just a tired old rant, same old shit, over and over and over.
Give us a viable alternative and don't worry about my state of mind, I worry about yours.;
Robert, please open up a school or whatever you want to call it, you may have something there that may work. Please show us how it works. Nobody can teach what they don't know, that is why I have so little faith in the family unit.
I have no desire to open a school and do not pretend to have great expertise in pedagogy or educational theory. I have never even hinted that I am opposed to public schooling or that I want to tell people how to run schools. Wm. is terribly confused an he has no desire to pay attention to what I have repeated dozens of times. The alternative to failure is success. The alternative to authoritarianism and corrosive and destructive arbitrary authority is to eliminate the source of those obnoxious things which interfere with the health and sanity of students, which are las which require attendance. If you believe schooling is good for kids and essential for democracy then for Christ's sake stop making it bad tasting medicine, punishment, brutal competition, incessant stress, and drudgery. The bad laws generate all of the negativity, coerciveness, and paternalistic control. The better methodologies have been formulated and articulated for generations. They cannot be effectively implemented because the laws put into place officials and bureaucrats who have excessive power and self-interest who resist change and would be superfluous if children were free to reject their stupid rules and oppression. Those in the school cult will neve get it because they need to believe that children need to be behavior-modified and controlled.
My 15th Century paternal ancestor was a wool dyer, who was gifted land, and his business became a producer of raw wool, which was exported to the textile mills in the Netherlands. After Henry VII imposed an export tariff on raw wool, England's woolers, were forced to become textile manufacturers, they dammed streams to build fulling and textile mills, and the family fortunes expanded, buying land, then renting and leasing.
This happened all over England.
Henry VII also imposed an import tariff on products that the English didn't make themselves.
The country which H7 took possession of after Bosworth, was a joke in Europe, the poor man of Europe, it's exports were raw wool and lumber. Henry VII's tariffs force the English to become self sufficient and create their own industries.
Potters and tinkers were popular occupations.
The manufacture of silverware was a virtual monopoly of the Low countries, as were the fine arts, anything the nobility used and wore was imported.
America has fallen behind because our government has encouraged corporations to export their
industries. Our national defense is now dependent on parts produced by China. Our standard of living is subsidized by the meager wages paid workers in Mexico, Somoa, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistand Bangladesh and Thailand..
We are no longer self sufficient, no longer the arsenal of democracy. Gone is the America that could roll out a bomber or fighter every couple of hours, that could produce hundreds of thousands of Jeeps, thousands of tanks. We can't even replenish our own stores of ammunition.
Look around and find anything in your house that is made in the USA, and if so, what parts of that product were made abroad, and what machinery used to make the part was made in whole or in part, abroad.
Global trade was suppose to promote peace and democracy, how is that going?
There was a book popular, especially among Marxists and the nascent environmental movement, called The Greening of America, it was touted at the tool by which to destroy hated capitalism.
That didn't workout too well, it hasn't hampered Capitalism a bid, in fact it has empowered the engine, while at the same time exporting our pollution, (which comes back, to us by the worldwide climate circulatory system of trade winds,polar winds, ocen gyres.
And has created social and economic turmoil, which has facilitated the rise of the fascist right.
Bill Clinton when he signed NAFTA and GATT gave birth to the MAGAts, by creating the rest belt/swing states.
Obama came close to pushing the accelerator to the floor, when he campaigned so vigorously for the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)
William, where do you meet all these marxists? What would you call the Marxist agenda? The capitalists have done a great job of shipping jobs overseas and importing cheap labor to bust the unions all by themselves! Seriously, I have never met a Marxist. I consider myself far left also? You mentioned once that marks argued for wage slaves instead of slaves because it would be cheaper? The cult hates Marxists. I find it hard to blame them for the current state of America. I blame excessive greed, free trade not fair trade, religious, dishonest, delusional thinking and very poor parenting.
These hard core old liners would do any with the ability for an individual to acquire enough wealth, to be able to invest it in a company, to build things, to earn a profit and thus create a sustainable society and a middle class.
The middle class is the enemy of the upper class, the 1%, heck the 10% who ride on the back of the rest of us.
An that class doesn't necessarily have to be billionaires and corporate CEO's either
I suggest that you read at least this: The New Class, byMilovan Djilas
History: The new cl~ss is an artificial creation that emerges only after a Communist revolution has succeeded. It is born out o~ the revolutionary party's need to consolidate its gains and eliminate opposition. Its roots are in the original Bolshevik party but it is not identical with that party. The party itself was built up by professional revolutionaries, not bureaucrats. The new class originated in the party (not the other way around) as orthodox class theory would maintain) and it grows in political power even as the party itself wanes (or is purged)o An oligarchy results. Its purpose is to establish an administrative monopoly throughout the land. In return, this oligarchy is encouraged to remain loyal through the granting of special privilege~ and economic preference. Djilas emphasizes the carrot and seems to ignore the stick.
A professor in a management course in 1971, had us study the Communist Manifesto as part of the course. I did not then and do not now see what that has to do with management and he never explained.
Today's Marxist's are fixated on "capitalism" and "imperialism" and are nostalgic for Russia or old, and see Putin as a victim of American capitalistic imperialism.
I am anti capitalist, capitalism serves and served a purpose,it actually created the middle class, only because government had the power to intervene.
On the other hand Communism is really governmentism, a belief in an all powerful government, with unlimited police powers.
Such a state was the USSR,is Russia Today, China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and an America under Trump, his minions and backers.
As a Wisconsinite, I'm not seeing the enthusiasm here that is absolutely essential for Harris to win this crucial swing state. Why? The messaging. We really need the campaign to address working class issues - as specifically as possible - and in unambiguous plain ass language.
We as Americans cannot afford to lose Wisconsin to Trump.
FT6 has sent over a million texts to WI. I am told otherwise, that even in red counties Trump enthusiasm is down. Same day registration is available at your polling place on Election Day if deadlines (below) are missed. Remember to bring ID or another proof of residence document.
Thousands of unregistered cheeseheads and sconnies trend Democratic. Registration deadlines for online and by mail (postmarked) for the General Presidential Election on November 5, 2024 is October 16, 2024 (20 days prior to the election).
You can register people in person at the clerk’s office through November 1, 2024.
Absentee ballot application deadline for the General Presidential Election is tbd.
In Wisconsin, you can pre-register to vote at 17 years old if you will be 18 by Election Day.
If you need help getting an ID, contact VoteRiders.org or call/text 1-844-338-8743.
Mail ballots should be mailed back at least a week prior to the election; or dropped off at an Early Voting site, or at ANY polling location on Election Day (no ID or waiting in line required). Ballots not received by 7pm on Election Day will not count.
We still have time to mitigate our 2020 losses and take our message to the diaspora. E.G. Uniontown, Waynesburg, Somerset, New Castle, Meadville, Sharon. Dubois Pa. Grand Rapids. Wausau, Green Bay, etc.
Target the message to them!
In 2020, Trump won my home county in Pennsyltucky by 65%. In others, 78%.
Trump won Waushara and Washington Counties, Wisconsin by 2/3. St. Clair County, Michigan by 64%.
To win the blue wall, neutralize MAGA.
She, and all Democrats, are working to restore the middle class, which has been ravaged by the policies of Reagan. The far right has long wanted to rid themselves of the Middle class, which is thorn in their side. But a strong middle class is necessary to maintain a stable Democracy. Biden started moving us from Reagan's economy based on economics, and back to one bases on Business as it should be.. Harris will continue that work. If they don't hear the message, they are not listening.
Damn, Thom, what an education. Thank you so much for this! I write a blog on Substack, but with only around 100 free subscribers. I quote you a lot. I feel like copying and pasting this entire blog on my Substack, and encouraging them to subscribe to your blog.
Buy Thom's books. They are a entire American Civics Course and carry solutions based on our past experiments and disasters.
"The main goal of a tariff is to encourage Americans to buy the products of domestic — rather than foreign — manufacturing. For that to work, companies that may consider investing billions in factories here in the US need to know that the tariffs aren’t just a whim or election stunt like they were with Trump, but will be around for the coming years or even decades necessary to recover their initial billion-dollar investments in new manufacturing facilities."
I never worked at the ITC or served at the US DC International trade court, but I was an officer of the ABA and was in organizations that represented judges who heard those cases. https://www.usitc.gov/
https://www.cit.uscourts.gov/#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Court%20of,laws%20of%20the%20United%20States. I knew several of the ITC commissioners and all their judges. Most of the Court of Trade judges.
I have not Shepardized their cases, but I bet that local communities, like disadvantaged Youngstown, Ohio have eve been parties in their cases although their fates are litigated there. Some of the cases involve patent and other technical evidence, and some of the judges have patent law backgrounds.
Ironically, I went to high school with a former commissioner, who I assume can care less about us locals.
The President of the United States is the primary negotiator of treaties with other countries, but the Senate must also ratify them:
The President negotiates treaties with other countries. The U.S. Department of State leads the negotiation process. The Office of the United States Trade Representative works out the details. Current projects. https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/agreements-under-negotiation#:~:text=The%20Office%20of%20the%20United,in%20partnership%20with%20our%20allies.
The Senate must ratify treaties by a two-thirds supermajority vote.
Treaties become part of international law and are binding on the United States. The Treaty Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, establishes the process for ratifying treaties. The United States also uses executive agreements, which are binding international agreements that are not submitted to the Senate for advice and consent.
Here is a list of current treaties and other agreements. https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements
The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements create an international trade legal framework for 164 economies around the world. These Agreements cover goods, services, intellectual property, standards, investment and other issues that impact the flow of trade.
My position has been that negotiations should consider the effect on more than just finances. E.G. My home town was decimated when the Taft Tariff was removed, ultimately ending the manufacture of tin plate. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Payne-Aldrich-Tariff-Act
As Thom has documented, Reagan was a disaster. But with a smile on his face, he conned the Reagan Democrats he had screwed.
Another glorious example of why I am so glad I came across your site and get to read your wonderful essays. So much information, so much history, so much enlightenment!
Great commentary Thom. Thank you.
This has special meaning to me as I worked in some of those factories in Ohio to get an education and move on to something else. Those who did not were, sadly, left behind under Reaganomics (or voodoo economics as we called it then). The jobs that helped me pay for my education are gone. The support for higher education has diminished significantly, and students now bear a crushing debt when they try to get the same education.
In retrospect, it all looks like a bad dream to get the country back to the gilded age and the roaring 1920’s - which ended up crushing most common people.
Can you somehow get this info to Kamala? It’s a fabulous example of your intelligent writing, and vitally important to her message NOW.
Thank you Thom.
The difference between Trump and A. Ham: Trump thinks he's a genius, but is an idiot. Hamilton was a genius, and yes, he too was a flawed man.
What if African countries could impose tariffs? Apparently they aren't allowed to do that by their "former" colonial masters, or the diamond trade would center on Kinshasa, not Brussels.
They do impose tariffs. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS?locations=ZG
I guess that I have a question, then: how can a country with plentiful resources--gold, diamonds, cobalt, copious water and timber, and over 100 million people--be so poor? It can't be ascribed entirely to internal wars and corruption can it?
Of course it can. First throwing very different tribal groups together with arbitrary boundaries made no sense, but is what the colonizers could grab (even shooting the king of Katanga to get his territory ahead of a British expedition.) That laid the seeds for future conflicts. Then the Belgian king looted it to the point that it was a slave state, and it finally got so bad his own parliament took it away from him. But the Brussels government did almost nothing for the people and after suddenly pulling out and leaving the place in chaos the CIA apparently encouraged the murder of the one man who might have pulled together its very disparate people. Then the U.S. supported an anti-Communist dictator/kleptomaniac who took everything that wasn't nailed down and since he was overthrown it has again been in tribal warfare. The tough tropical climate doesn't help development either, but in any case what should be one of the richest countries in the world is now one of the poorest.
Thanks for your input. Patrice Lumumba is one of several elected leaders that we have removed forcefully for not being sufficiently pro-corporate. This and the other interventions you mentioned indicate that the problem with Congo is from outside, but they have internalized it. They are divided along ethnic lines (as are almost all large nations), but their one gift from colonization is having a lingua franca of French. If the West can not just recognize their sovereignty, but truly accept it, it would be a big help to their development. Congo should be on a par with Nigeria or Indonesia now.
Oh definitely, and keeping others in power like Mobutu or Papa Doc are examples of short-term thinking. Iran and Nicaragua are classic examples of backing "clients" while destroying alternatives, leading to terrible trouble down the road. Current US involvement in the Sahel also in my opinion is a dead end route, since while social conditions remain bad there the causes of ISIS and such groups will never go away. (It is the same as Gaza.) Killing them just makes more enemies; meanwhile Russia is grabbing the minerals in the Central African Republic and China is taking the infrastructure it builds when the countries there default. They practice neo-colonialism without the costs of war.
But the Congo has always had issues--it was given to Belgium, without any African input of course, because that was a small country and so avoided Britain and France disputing it. (They had already come close to war over the Nile Valley in Sudan.) Again, this is an example of how greedy and short-sighted decisions lead to long term problems, and the people always suffer.
Dictatorships have existed to steal the wealth of the citizens. Nothing like privatization of the wealth. What Putin has squandered on Ukraine is unbelievable.
what?
Just a meandering thought but wouldn't it be great if tribes got together in a agreed peaceful convention and redrew their Countries borders according to the residents. Africa looks like how the Republicans were gerrymandering the USA. They need to come together with language and tribal affiliation of their own. I realize this would be extremely hard to do but it's better than maintaining Europe's arbitrary sectioning from the 1800's.
Ultimately, boundaries don't protect anybody, but they do reinforce suspicions of those who are different. What would be better for everyone would be not having leaders who exploit these suspicions to distract the people from the government's failures.
Manufacturing and tariffs are good for the nation, labor, and domestic economies. National finance is against labor being strong against their own interests. The balance of finance and labor interests is based on government control on the issues of the nation. The only way to create a majority middle class to uplift the lower class is tax policy to keep money becoming cheap by having a rate of more than 50% in business and a top tax rate of 94% but at least 50%. Europe learned FDR's tax policies success and adopted them because they work to make a nations population affluent keeping the super rich constrained to a group of a few. Such policies make mudsill a system of economic creation of unearned millionaires and billionaires through a majority of the population living in lower class incomes.
I had recently read a portion of today's Hartmann Report in Hartmann's book, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--And What We Can Do to Stop It." Chapter 4, A Middle-Class Primer, includes "Step Three: Protections for Working People," where Thom explains Hamilton's common sense plan to use tariffs. I highly recommend this 2013 book, which is more relevant today. Our library had a copy, and I listened to the audiobook. I found a used hard copy reasonably priced for my reference.
I'm looking forward to the new book, which will be released on October 8th. I'm not earning a commission for selling Hartmann's books, though. Lol.
As I recall from History class, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs sank the whole world into depression that lasted until 1939. It was 20% across the board or something. My grandfather shipped a cow to Winnipeg to slaughter and freight was more than the cow was worth. If Trump does even 10% across the board, could the same thing happen again?
Cannot argue with the history or the economic effects as stated, but who the hell wants to work in a factory? I know, because I grew up in a neighborhood with them and lots of factory workers.
That is a huge problem. Another is the equipment is not what it used to be. It can take some education and computer savvy for the jobs you are talking about.
In the meantime, people have been sold pipe-dreams about getting an education and having that education pay-off. If only that student debt also worked the way the Republicans wished it did.
Back to my original thought, these jobs are BORING. They are hard on your mind and body. My heart is with the UAW workers doing battle right now.
Boy is this complicated with all that has changed in the last four decades since the factory doors closed here!
Student Debt was intentionally meant to enslave future intellectuals financially. Yes it's worked great and currently they can't afford to get married, have children or buy a house.
Sadly Alis,in my opinion, manufacturing is about the only job non-thinkers like the cult can do. And God knows that we have more than our fair share of them. They just live to complain constantly and disrupt anyway! Either give them a manufacturing job or we'll have to have a civil war! Like this current election. They want to steal all of our stuff! Really!
I’m wondering why the arguments isn’t being made ( by the Dems) that if not for Bush and then Obama pumping federal funds into the economy in order to save the banks after the disastrous recession of 2007-08, the economy regained what was lost and continued to improve into the trump years until he was poorly prepared and unable to deal with the pandemic ( going so far to scrap an Executive order by Obama that organized a pandemic response group).
The economy in 2016 to 2020 was just a continued of the earlier response to the recession.
Oh, it is. Maybe not by the Harris campaign, but whenever Trump brags about his “greatest economy” someone will point out he inherited a stable, rising economy from Obama, which he was too witless to protect with competent leadership when the pandemic hit. But this article isn’t about the stock market…it’s about the loss of manufacturing jobs due to neoliberal trade policies.
Yes, the article is about the loss of manufacturing jobs and how tariffs when applied properly had prevented the Midwest from becoming a rust belt and I was simply tying it to the economy that surged from 2008 to 2020. We all remember trump visiting some plants in the Midwest that he promised to revitalize which eventually closed , jobs no longer available.
I just don’t see either the nominees or their surrogates talking about the recovery spilling into the trump administration.
As an aside, I lived in Washington during the Reagan period and I remember the reduction in force (RIF) , the emptying/closing of St Elizabeth’s Hospital ( psychiatric institute) and the effect on the community. Increased in hopelessness and unemployment. Some seemly the few dozen homes street people that we knew by name became an overwhelming problem that the city was unprepared for. Then improved under Clinton and now back to where we were in on the 80’s.
Here in one phenomenal article, we have an education in tariffs, which is also a history lesson, a lesson in international relations and national security, in neoliberal folly, and in economics, as well as at least one or two other things. One of the most important lessons is unintended but perfectly illustrated. Thom has demonstrated here, once again, why compulsory school attendance has been a total failure and a disaster for millions of students.
I believe I remember hearing about tariffs in high school. I was just smart enough to get by with a very superficial understanding and the ability to choose the correct choices on a test to pass a course without having any real knowledge and comprehension of the history, the economics, the logic, or the politics involved. When I graduated with a B+ average, I couldn’t have told you what the particulars are relative to tariffs if my life had depended upon it. In the one or two classes I had in college, the importance and specifics and the history of tariffs were a blur again, and I passed the course without a clue. My economics professor argued that over-population was not a problem because expansion was a good thing and technology and human ingenuity would always result in jobs, adequate food production, and security. That has worked out just swell, don’t you think?
Thom says that the people where tariffs mattered most, such as in the rust belt understand tariffs. I suspect that there are millions there who got through school just as I did, however, who have no idea why there are no decent jobs and why their choices are extremely limited. They didn’t go to school to answer such questions for themselves. They didn’t make the connection when the topic was presented to them as an abstract and academic subject. They faked it, and if they couldn’t fake it they may or may not have failed the course or dropped out. But they probably didn’t know tariffs from tiddley-winks.
Interest, initiative, and motivation cannot be manufactured in a school any more than products can be manufactured over the long term without a facility, raw materials, labor, and management. The information we need is in the article and in Thom’s books which are referenced in the article, which will lead to other books and original sources and research for students who are not demoralized, insulted, and infantilized. When “experts” condense it all down, homogenize, sterilize, and standardize it and students are spoon-fed their brilliant summaries in classes, it becomes so much mush and slush. As I repeat endlessly, education and coercion are antithetical. It would be wonderful if all students in school could read this article and get the full benefits, instead of learning about tariffs 60 years too late as I did. But we live in the real world. School is not the real world. Not even close. We've had it bass-ackwards for nearly two centuries. A President Harris cannot save us all by herself.
IHSus Christie Robert. Here you go again with your rant against public education.
Always bitchin, so tell us Robert, I've asked you this before and will continue asking until you answer
What is your solution
1.Universal illiteracy
2. Vouchers
3. Religious education
4. Pre 19th century were it was the responsility of the father to tutor the child, and if he lacked the means or died and left them orphans, the children grew up illiterate
If none of the above what is your solution.
Wm,
Have you seen a doctor recently? You need medical attention urgently.
If someone points a gun to your head and threatens you, what is your alternative? Mine would be for the threat to be removed somehow so I could proceed as a free citizen in a free democracy and go about learning, living, and leaving others to do the same. I thought you were a genius. I was clearly mistaken. In colonial America, literacy was higher than it is today and books were in homes and people actually read them and prized them and the knowledge they got from them on their own initiative. I do not provide this information for you because you have proven yourself incapable of learning. School obviously didn't do you much good in the logic department. I hope that other people less obtuse and arrogant will happen to read what I write and be the better for it.
Nice try at deflection and avoidance Robert.
Again I ask you what is your solution to public schooling.
apparently you have none, all you have a is along bitching rant, to avoid the issue
Again Robert
What is your solution
1.Universal illiteracy
2. Vouchers
3. Religious education
4. Pre 19th century were it was the responsibility of the father to tutor the child, and if he lacked the means or died and left them orphans, the children grew up illiterate
If none of the above what is your solution.
No comment. My time is valuable. Your symptoms are profoundly serious.
You have no comment, because you have no answers. You are a seriously troubled person, all you have is a rant and rage against public education, but no answer, no alternative
I would take you seriously if you had an answer, a solution, a viable alternative, but you have none.
So public education is problematic, we all know that, but what is the alternative, what are the alternatives.
For that you have no answer, just a tired old rant, same old shit, over and over and over.
Give us a viable alternative and don't worry about my state of mind, I worry about yours.;
NO COMMENT
Of course you have no comment, All you have is a rant, but no alternatives.
Robert, please open up a school or whatever you want to call it, you may have something there that may work. Please show us how it works. Nobody can teach what they don't know, that is why I have so little faith in the family unit.
Bob,
I have no desire to open a school and do not pretend to have great expertise in pedagogy or educational theory. I have never even hinted that I am opposed to public schooling or that I want to tell people how to run schools. Wm. is terribly confused an he has no desire to pay attention to what I have repeated dozens of times. The alternative to failure is success. The alternative to authoritarianism and corrosive and destructive arbitrary authority is to eliminate the source of those obnoxious things which interfere with the health and sanity of students, which are las which require attendance. If you believe schooling is good for kids and essential for democracy then for Christ's sake stop making it bad tasting medicine, punishment, brutal competition, incessant stress, and drudgery. The bad laws generate all of the negativity, coerciveness, and paternalistic control. The better methodologies have been formulated and articulated for generations. They cannot be effectively implemented because the laws put into place officials and bureaucrats who have excessive power and self-interest who resist change and would be superfluous if children were free to reject their stupid rules and oppression. Those in the school cult will neve get it because they need to believe that children need to be behavior-modified and controlled.
Thank you, Thom. I finally understand tariffs thanks to your clear reporting and to your grasp of the historical sweep, cause and effect of the issue.
My 15th Century paternal ancestor was a wool dyer, who was gifted land, and his business became a producer of raw wool, which was exported to the textile mills in the Netherlands. After Henry VII imposed an export tariff on raw wool, England's woolers, were forced to become textile manufacturers, they dammed streams to build fulling and textile mills, and the family fortunes expanded, buying land, then renting and leasing.
This happened all over England.
Henry VII also imposed an import tariff on products that the English didn't make themselves.
The country which H7 took possession of after Bosworth, was a joke in Europe, the poor man of Europe, it's exports were raw wool and lumber. Henry VII's tariffs force the English to become self sufficient and create their own industries.
Potters and tinkers were popular occupations.
The manufacture of silverware was a virtual monopoly of the Low countries, as were the fine arts, anything the nobility used and wore was imported.
America has fallen behind because our government has encouraged corporations to export their
industries. Our national defense is now dependent on parts produced by China. Our standard of living is subsidized by the meager wages paid workers in Mexico, Somoa, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistand Bangladesh and Thailand..
We are no longer self sufficient, no longer the arsenal of democracy. Gone is the America that could roll out a bomber or fighter every couple of hours, that could produce hundreds of thousands of Jeeps, thousands of tanks. We can't even replenish our own stores of ammunition.
Look around and find anything in your house that is made in the USA, and if so, what parts of that product were made abroad, and what machinery used to make the part was made in whole or in part, abroad.
Global trade was suppose to promote peace and democracy, how is that going?
There was a book popular, especially among Marxists and the nascent environmental movement, called The Greening of America, it was touted at the tool by which to destroy hated capitalism.
That didn't workout too well, it hasn't hampered Capitalism a bid, in fact it has empowered the engine, while at the same time exporting our pollution, (which comes back, to us by the worldwide climate circulatory system of trade winds,polar winds, ocen gyres.
And has created social and economic turmoil, which has facilitated the rise of the fascist right.
Bill Clinton when he signed NAFTA and GATT gave birth to the MAGAts, by creating the rest belt/swing states.
Obama came close to pushing the accelerator to the floor, when he campaigned so vigorously for the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)
.
William, where do you meet all these marxists? What would you call the Marxist agenda? The capitalists have done a great job of shipping jobs overseas and importing cheap labor to bust the unions all by themselves! Seriously, I have never met a Marxist. I consider myself far left also? You mentioned once that marks argued for wage slaves instead of slaves because it would be cheaper? The cult hates Marxists. I find it hard to blame them for the current state of America. I blame excessive greed, free trade not fair trade, religious, dishonest, delusional thinking and very poor parenting.
Bob, there is an old guard Marxist, which constitutes the backbone of the extreme left.
They are professors in university, writ books, publish magazines and news letters, etc.
They have an affection for Russia, they are romantics, they see America, still, as an imperialistic nation, and actually side with Putin and Orban
They are 21st Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#:~:text=Tankie%20is%20a%20pejorative%20label,republics%2C%20whether%20contemporary%20or%20historical.
These hard core old liners would do any with the ability for an individual to acquire enough wealth, to be able to invest it in a company, to build things, to earn a profit and thus create a sustainable society and a middle class.
The middle class is the enemy of the upper class, the 1%, heck the 10% who ride on the back of the rest of us.
An that class doesn't necessarily have to be billionaires and corporate CEO's either
I suggest that you read at least this: The New Class, byMilovan Djilas
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1282&context=gov_fac_pubs
History: The new cl~ss is an artificial creation that emerges only after a Communist revolution has succeeded. It is born out o~ the revolutionary party's need to consolidate its gains and eliminate opposition. Its roots are in the original Bolshevik party but it is not identical with that party. The party itself was built up by professional revolutionaries, not bureaucrats. The new class originated in the party (not the other way around) as orthodox class theory would maintain) and it grows in political power even as the party itself wanes (or is purged)o An oligarchy results. Its purpose is to establish an administrative monopoly throughout the land. In return, this oligarchy is encouraged to remain loyal through the granting of special privilege~ and economic preference. Djilas emphasizes the carrot and seems to ignore the stick.
A professor in a management course in 1971, had us study the Communist Manifesto as part of the course. I did not then and do not now see what that has to do with management and he never explained.
Today's Marxist's are fixated on "capitalism" and "imperialism" and are nostalgic for Russia or old, and see Putin as a victim of American capitalistic imperialism.
I am anti capitalist, capitalism serves and served a purpose,it actually created the middle class, only because government had the power to intervene.
On the other hand Communism is really governmentism, a belief in an all powerful government, with unlimited police powers.
Such a state was the USSR,is Russia Today, China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and an America under Trump, his minions and backers.