"So what can we think when we attempt to look at the overall picture? We conclude that all essential ingredients of the neoliberal globalization have been abandoned by the mainstream economists and by Democratic administration in the US as they will be further abandoned by Trump. It is in that sense that Trump’s assumption of power on the 20th of January represents a symbolic date for the final rejection of these principles. The goals are no longer free movement of goods because tariffs stop them; movement of technology is limited because of the so-called security concerns; movement of capital is reduced because the Chinese (and most recently Japanese as In the case of US Steel) are often not allowed to buy American companies; movement of labor has been severely curtailed. So what essential ingredients of neoliberal globalization have been left intact?
My point here is not to argue whether the abandonment of these principles is good for the United States or Europe or China or the world, or not. It is rather simply to show that it was not Trump who is the only agent of change, but that these principles have been in abeyance for at least a decade or perhaps a decade and a half. The Financial Times has misled its readers by not clearly stating that its promotion of trade blocs and revision of other key principles means in reality the abandonment of neoliberal globalization as a project. This is happening because of (1) geostrategic competition with China and because (2) such neoliberal policies have domestically been harmful for Western middle classes."
#Economics #Neoliberalism #Globalization #TradeWars #USA #China #Protectionism #PoliticalEconomy
“This is why we are currently in the situation where the rules do not exist anymore. They are being treated in an entirely ad hoc manner: a certain set of rules are being used in one country or in one set of countries and other rules are being used in another set of countries. All of this is justified on the grounds of national interest. This is not an illegitimate position to take but one has to be clear about what it implies. It implies the return to mercantilistic policies where the interests of individual countries are paramount. It also means the abandonment of any cosmopolitan and internationalist perspective where the rules are at least in principle universal. We no longer have universal rules and the main culprit for not having universal rules is not Trump, but the view of the world where domestic political interest and the so-called security concerns are above everything else. This is not a world of globalization, but of parceled regionalisms and even nationalism.”