I’ll come
out with it straight away: I’m a protectionist. I have always been a
protectionist, and will always be a protectionist. You can now assemble a
firing squad.
I’m not an
economist, but then as Marx correctly (for once) pointed out, economics is a
sphere of political/ideological activity – which is why you’ll find highly
qualified economists backing every conceivable economic system on a very broad
spectrum from laissez-faire capitalism to Stalinism.
Quite frankly, my first
thoughts when presented with an ‘expert’ in economics (or anything else for
that matter) are what ideological considerations are driving that person and
whose pocket s/he may be in.
The 64 trillion dollar
question: who’s benefiting?
An
intuitive feel for economics is built into us humans. The simplest Stone Age
village societies had an economy. People worked at providing not only their own
needs but also at producing surpluses that could be bartered for commodities they
were short of, sometimes with other people within their own communities,
sometimes with people from other places. In the Highlands of PNG where I lived
for almost a decade, Europeans first came on the scene in the 1930s. But there
was already in existence a trading chain that connected those remote mountainous
areas with the coast. Salt fetched a high price, as did little sea-shells that
were used for, among others things, bride-price payments. The early gold
prospectors paid their native labourers with those little shells and the value
of them soon plummeted – in a word, inflation set in! When it comes to
economics, it would indeed appear that “there is nothing new under the Sun”.
“From 50 to 200
giri-giri shells for one piglet? That’s not just inflation, it’s hyperinflation!”
Let me spin
you an allegorical yarn. Once upon a time in the dim and distant past, a
village chief found himself in a bit of a tight spot. There was a local stone
axe industry, but traders from another village were offering stone axes at a very
low price – a single animal hide as opposed to two hides which was the local
rate of exchange. At first, this seemed to please most people. But then local
stone axe makers started being laid off, which increased the community’s dependency
burden and caused a lot of resentment. The chief started suspecting that the
traders had an ulterior motive for offering axes at this low rate, namely to
see the demise of the local stone axe industry with a view to creating
dependence on their axes and then upping the price to three or four hides, and in
the process gaining political leverage over his village. So to dissuade his
people from buying those outside axes, he decreed that they should cost three hides
while keeping the local ones at two. This ensured that his local stone axe industry
would survive and continue employing lots of people, thereby avoiding the
social ills that arise from unemployment, and keeping the village out of the
clutches of external manipulators.
In modern
language this chief was a protectionist, protecting his local stone axe
industry by imposing a tariff on the imported product, and at the same time
making sure that no outsiders could have him and his village over a barrel
through reliance on continuing supply.
Roll the
clock forward a few millennia, substitute President Trump for that village
chief and steel and aluminium for stone axes, and you have a pretty good grasp
of what Chief Donald did by slapping tariffs on imports of those metals, and
the reasons for it. Other commodities have followed. (Alright, the analogy is
not perfect, but let’s not spoil a good yarn!)
Protectionist
measures have been a viable economic strategy for a long time. In Europe, they
go back to at least the Middle Ages. For a developing economy with a fledgling
industrial sector, protectionism is an essential – those nascent industries usually
haven’t got a hope of surviving if they are in competition with imports from established
outside mass producers. The same applies to economies recovering from
devastation – Japan had one of most heavily protected economies for decades
after WW2.
Protecting
your productive sectors is a way of protecting your people’s livelihoods and
your national sovereignty. It’s about putting your own nation – your own people
– first. It’s nationalism in action in the economic domain.
Protectionist policies
are needed to take on the globalisation juggernaut
But
nationalism too has become a dirty word. The anti-protectionist position is an
expression of the anti-nation-state stance that has gained currency over the
past couple of decades: the view that the nation-state is not, or should not
be, the fundamental unit of geopolitical
organisation. To the globalist power-brokers, nation-states give people too
much control over their own destinies. Protectionism as a handmaiden of
nationalism is anathema to globalisation,
the economic cutting edge of the insidious control-seeking globalist ideology.
Sure, it
makes sense for nations that trade heavily with one another to form free-trade
blocs. But it’s a quantum leap from those to situations where neo-feudal
systems such as China can flood the world with goods made in factories manned
by workers who work for pittances, and drive the rest of us into indebtedness
while our own industries and workforces become idle (those that they don’t end
up taking control of). I’m not suggesting that globalisation is a Chinese plot,
but they sure know how to benefit from it at the expense of most of the rest of
us.
Yep, globalisation
enhances prosperity all round. These workers slave away for 10-12 hours daily
for around NZ$100/week. Meanwhile, workers they have displaced in Western
countries queue up for the dole. Now that’s what you call progress.
Protectionist
measures will have adverse effects, the globalisation lobby warns us. And of
course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when those saying so have the
means to bring those adverse effects about.
To return
to our parable, the other village could retaliate by slapping a tariff on hides
bought from our wise chief’s village, or flood the regional market with their
own cheap-and-nasty hides to pull the rug from under the hide traders from our
chief’s lot. They would be cutting deals left, right and centre in an attempt
to isolate our good chief’s economy with a view to bringing him to heel and
making him accept trade arrangements to his village’s detriment. The term
‘trade war’ is of historically recent origin, but I’ll bet it fundamentally
goes back to the Stone Age just like inflation does. What has changed between
then and now is the scale on which it happens.
I am a
protectionist because I believe in the nation-state and putting your own people
first. I am a protectionist because I am a nationalist. Ultimately, it’s all a
matter of national sovereignty – something that the globalists are out to
undermine.
But they
have met their match in Donald Trump. ‘The Donald’ will put America first – and
so, as elected leader of that country, he jolly well should. Many a European
nationalist political movement is likewise returning to the paradigm of “Own
country/own people first”, and electorates are responding positively. Here’s
hoping the trend continues and is translated into economic action through
effective protectionist policies.
Barend Vlaardingerbroek BA,
BSc, BEdSt, PGDipLaws, MAppSc, PhD is an associate professor of education at
the American University of Beirut and is a regular commentator on social and
political issues. Feedback welcome at bv00@aub.edu.lb
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