I don't think it will come as a shock to anyone to hear that people who write about politics and policy often have an ideological agenda. (And yes, I confess that sometimes I have one! Maybe I should label my posts that have an ideological agenda so as to be more transparent about it when I'm doing it.) When I'm reading something, I often try to figure out who the author is and where she or he fits into the ideological spectrum, to help me get a sense of exactly how the spin is being spun.
In trade policy, one of the ideological groups that has always intrigued me is what I think of as the "progressive nationalists." I'm not sure whether this is a term in general use, but it's how I think of them. From what I can tell, this category is mostly an American phenomenon. I haven't come across too many people outside the U.S. who fall into the group.
What exactly does this group believe in? On domestic economic policy, progressive nationalists tend to focus on policies they believe will redistribute wealth, reduce economic inequality, restrict corporate power, and help workers. (This approach can be contrasted with one that emphasizes policies that increase overall economic growth.) With regard to international economic policy, progressive nationalists support "bringing jobs home," meaning they want to bring manufacturing back from the developing world to the U.S. (if I understand them correctly, developing countries would do natural resource extraction and some processing, while manufacturing that uses those resources would be done in the U.S.). And then somewhat relatedly, on foreign policy, progressive nationalists would like to see the U.S. remain as a hegemon of some sort, although there may be some variation in how they think the U.S. should exercise its power (some get pretty close to a neocon position on military intervention, while others see "economic statecraft" as a kinder, gentler way to use U.S. power).
At this point you may be wondering, what triggered this discussion? Well, I was reading an FT piece with a conversation between FT columnist Rana Foroohar and former Biden administration official Jennifer Harris, and while it's hard to be certain about a particular person's overall package of ideological viewpoints, whenever I read something from these two, my sense is that they fall into the "progressive nationalist" category. (I would be happy to listen to their objections if they think this is a mischaracterization!).
To explore this a bit more, here are a couple excerpts from the conversation. First up, there is a discussion of "economic statecraft":
Rana Foroohar: How did you first become interested in economics as a tool of statecraft?
Jennifer Harris: During my time at the State Department, I was thinking about economics really through the lens of the US’s relationship with China. This was back in the early days after China’s WTO membership when the George W Bush administration was telling us that this was really a geopolitical necessity, that we would be changing China more than China would be changing the system. Obviously, I had scepticism at the time, but didn’t quite know how vindicated I would be some 20 years on. And it wasn’t until I left the State Department and wrote a book (War By Other Means) that I traced how we used to be pretty good at flexing economic muscle for geopolitical rather than economic ends, as a country. It’s what explains the success of the US in foreign policy from, really, the founding, on through to the middle of the cold war. ...
I've expressed skepticism about this sort of "economic statecraft" before (you might even say I have an ideological agenda against it!). Did we really "use to be pretty good at flexing economic muscle for geopolitical ... ends"? We certainly did it a lot, but the results were a bit mixed (occasionally they were good, of course -- if you take enough shots, some will inevitably go in). I think these types of policies often have negative economic consequences for Americans and for people in the affected foreign countries, and make Americans and the rest of the world less safe as well. Of course, I'm happy to hear from Harris on some examples of what she thinks falls into the "flexing economic muscle for geopolitical ends" bucket, and how she evaluates success and failure here. Also, what does she think of the liberalization under the GATT that took place during the period she describes as successful?
One caveat here is this question: Am I right to think of this as a "progressive nationalist" ideological viewpoint? Is it even "progressive"? Many foreign policy-type progressives I know would object to it, but if someone is a progressive on domestic economic policy, maybe they qualify as a progressive across the board? Also, is it "nationalist"? It's certainly not isolationist, but I wouldn't call it internationalist either. I guess I see it as using national power to intervene in other countries to support domestic goals, and in that sense it's nationalist. Anyway, I recognize the difficulty of coming up with the proper terminology here, and if someone has a better description of this viewpoint, I'm happy to hear it.
Next up is some more about China. Harris says:
RF: For years now, you’ve been more hawkish on China than many others in policy circles. Was there a point where your views on the risks crystallised?
JH: I was looking at their economic model and just appreciating how it seemed incredibly adept at disentangling the liberalisation-cum-democracy story that we were all sold. That, in fact, there was a lot of twisting of market mechanisms as points of leverage that, in geopolitical terms, could make it seem as though China would meaningfully integrate themselves into the liberal order, when in fact that wasn’t going to happen. ...
My reading of the history of China's integration into the trading system is very different from that of Harris. In my view, China might have been integrated into the international economic system with much more success, but, in part, economic statecraft/war got in the way. Here's the short version of that story. The U.S. agreed to China's accession in 1999 and passed PNTR in 2000, and then China entered the WTO in December 2001. The ensuing years would have been a great time to press China on the market opening commitments it made, as well as push them on democratization and human rights (through constructive, non-sanctions-based mechanisms, rather than "economic statecraft"). However, while in the summer of 2001 it looked like China would be the focus of U.S. foreign policy, 9/11 happened and everything changed. Instead of a full-court press on China in these areas, the U.S. needed China's non-objection on things like the War on Terror and its associated economic statecraft, and was willing to do things such as "allow[] PRC interrogators access to Uighur detainees at Guantanamo." How would things have turned out if China had been the focus of U.S. foreign policy back then? It's hard to say! But we got to where we are today in large part because China was not the focus.
More generally on the point about "hawkishness," when I watch U.S. politics, I feel like I have a sense of the Republican side of hawkishness, with "neocons" being the most hawkish, but most Republicans being hawkish about at least one country or region. (There is some talk about Republican "isolationists" these days, but in terms of GOP political leaders, I think you could fit the actual foreign policy isolationists into a small closet). But Republicans can't act alone, and they need to get some Democratic support for their military and economic interventions, including support from some Democratic political leaders and thought leaders. This is where I get confused about what the progressive nationalists believe. They seem willing to be characterized as hawkish in some contexts, but just how hawkish are they? Is war a last resort, a first resort, or not a resort at all? There may be some variation here, and I'd want to hear directly from anyone in this group so as not to mischaracterize their views.
One final point here is climate change:
RF: Let’s talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. It represents a very powerful turning away from the ‘market knows best’ approach and towards the idea that climate is a national emergency, a war that we need to wage. Talk a little bit about that evolution and what the conversation was around the way the IRA would be structured.
JH: Climate change was a problem that did not lend itself well to the neoliberal policymaking recipe. And I think the largest indictment there is the attempt and failure and reattempt to put a price on carbon, running at that brick wall again and again and again and having it just get more and more politically toxic. We needed to create a different story about the relationship between state and market and the responsibility of government to really shape markets and pivot them towards a set of national or, in this case, global needs that are, I think, much larger than the outcomes that markets left to their own devices would provide. People also tend to be a fan of good jobs, and if this is the vehicle to get there, I think that it’s load-bearing as a multilateral idea.
I don't have the sense that the Inflation Reduction Act will do enough to reduce carbon emissions, at least according to the estimates I've seen from proponents. Is it the biggest thing the U.S. has ever done to reduce carbon emissions? Maybe! But it's going to take a lot more action from the U.S., and these U.S. actions need to be coordinated with other countries to a much greater extent than they are now, to really make a dent, and the prospects for this don't look promising at the moment. (In fairness, the Biden administration has tried to moderate the nationalism in the IRA through creative regulations, in order to smooth things over with allies and increase the impact of the IRA's climate change provisions).
Now, in terms of what "neoliberals" want to do about climate change, there's the obvious point -- which I bring up every time I get a chance! -- that "neoliberal" isn't a very useful term in the public debate. If her criticism of "neoliberals" means that she believes "free markets won't solve climate change on their own," that's obviously true. But if she means that free market supporters have no solutions here, that's obviously wrong. Many free market supporters (including me!) want to see the U.S. and other governments impose a carbon tax of some sort. In my view, that would be a stronger and more effective government action than the incoherent IRA approach. I think that at least some progressives would support a carbon tax, but others, perhaps including Harris, seem to oppose it. Although perhaps she doesn't oppose it, but just thinks it's a political non-starter, as she notes above "the attempt and failure and reattempt to put a price on carbon." My response to that is, when was this tried in a serious way? If a president or high-ranking members of Congress had gotten behind it and made the case for it, it might have happened. Effective leaders have enacted much less popular policies many times, and a carbon tax is more likely to have happened if someone in power had made a strong case for it (I'm not sure I see anyone on the political scene right now who could do it, but it does feel like we are going to turn the corner to new political leadership soon).
Wrapping up the climate change point, I'm not sure what ideological grouping my views put me in, except maybe "free markets are the best option, unless there are market failures in which case the government should step in, but should try to avoid regulatory capture when doing so." Perhaps that's not catchy enough (and it may not be ideological enough either), but I'm sticking with it unless someone can come up with something pithier.
Summing up this post, I'm not totally sure "progressive nationalist" is the best description of the views of Foroohar and Harris, but it's the best I can do in trying to make sense of what they are saying. And their views are important because they seem to be reflected in a lot of what the Biden administration is doing right now, so I think it's worth trying to characterize what's going on in terms of its ideological basis.
