What's wrong with tariffs - Cory Doctorow

[justaprogressive]

It's not that the Republicans and the Democrats are the same…obviously. But for decades – since Clinton – the Dems have sided with neoliberal economics, just like their Republican counterparts, so the major differences between the two related to overt discrimination, to the exclusion of the economic policies that immiserated working people, with the worst effects landing on racial minorities, women, and gender minorities.

So the Dems stood against discrimination in mortgage lending – but not for the minimum wage that would have lifted the lowest paid workers out of poverty so the could afford a mortgage. They stood for abortion rights, but against Medicare For All, which meant all women had the right to an abortion, but the poorest women couldn't afford one. And of course, in a country where racial and gender discrimination were still the order of the day, the poorest and most vulnerable Americans were racialized, women, disabled, and/or queer.

The Dems' embrace of Reaganomics meant that working people of all types experienced steady decline over 40 years: stagnating wages, economic precarity, increased indebtedness, and rising prices for health care, education, and housing. When Trump figured out that he could campaign on these issues, Dems had no response. Trump's "Make America Great Again" was meant to appeal to a time when working Americans were – on average, depending on their whiteness, maleness and straightness – better housed, better paid, and better cared for.

Of course, those benefits were unevenly felt: America was slow to extend the New Deal to racial minorities, women, disabled people, and other disfavored groups. Trump's genius was to marry white supremacy to economic grievance, tricking white workers into blaming their decline on women, brown and Black people, and queers – and not on the billionaires who had grown so much richer even as workers got poorer.

But Trump couldn't have pulled this trick off without the Dem establishment's total unwillingness to confront the hollowness of their economic policies. From Pelosi's "We're capitalists and that's the way it is" to Hillary Clinton's catastrophic campaign slogan, "America is already great," the Dems' answer to workers' fear and anger was, "You are wrong, everything is fine." Imagine having had your house stolen in the foreclosure crisis after Obama decided to "foam the runways" for the banks by letting them steal their borrowers' homes and then hearing Hillary Clinton tell you "America is already great":

https://www.npr.org/2014/05/25/315276441/its-geithner-vs-warren-in-battle-of-the-bailout

Racial and gender justice matter, of course, but when they're pursued without considering economic justice, they're dead ends. The point of racial and gender justice can't merely be firing half of the 150 straight white men who control 99% of the country's capital and replacing them with 75 assorted women, queers and people of color. The worst-treated workers in America are also its most discriminated-against workers, so the best way to help women, racialized people, and other disfavored minorities is to help workers: protect unions, raise the minimum wage, defend tenants, cancel student debt, and give everyone healthcare. In the same way that a special tax on incomes over $1m will disproportionately affect straight white men, an increase in the minimum wage will disproportionately benefit women and people of color – as well as the majority of straight white men who are also getting fucked over by people with $1m salaries.

Since the Clinton years, Democrats have been trying to figure out how to defend economic policies that help rich people while still somehow being the party of social justice. This has produced a kind of grotesque, Sheryl Sandberg "Lean In" liberalism, which stood for the rights of women who were also corporate executives. It's not that these women aren't treated worse than their male counterparts – misogyny is alive and well in the boardroom. But the number of women who experience boardroom discrimination is tiny, because the number of women in the boardroom is also tiny.

The right saw an opportunity and seized it. As Naomi Klein writes in Doppelganger, they created "mirror world" versions of social justice issues, warped reflections of the leftist positions that had been abandoned by a progressive coalition led by liberals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

In right wing, conspiratorial hands, rage at wage stagnation and lack of parental leave turned into reactionary demands for an economy in which women would be full-time homemakers while their husbands recovered their roles as breadwinners. The 1999 Battle of Seattle saw mass protests over the WTO and a free trade agenda that would let capital chase low wages and weak environmental and worker safety policies around the world. But Clinton went ahead and signed more free trade agreements, which were also pursued by Obama. So the right filled the vacuum with a mirror-world version of the Battle of Seattle's rage at billionaires, transforming the anti-free trade agenda into racism, xenophobia, and Cold War 2.0 sinophobia.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/02/me-or-your-lying-eyes/#spherical-cows-on-frictionless-surfaces

[Renew Deal]

1. That's thought provoking

It resembles arguments made by Bernie in 2016. He was heavily criticized at the time for prioritizing economic justice over social justice. But his view was that rising tides raise all ships.

[gab13by13]

2. Don't group me with those "moderate" Democrats

When Walmart came to town I warned people about shopping there. I never walked into a Walmart for 50 years. Today, in my rural town, if I want to buy a TV at a place other than Walmart, I have to drive 70 miles. I bought New Balance sneakers and Red Wing work boots made in America. I buy my appliances "made in America" well assembled in America, same with my cars.

I still shop at mom and pop stores.

We would have higher employment today had Walmart never come to town.

I did my part back then, but other people wanted those 15 dollar blue jeans and 10 dollar shirts.

It is way too late for Krasnov to make America Isolationist.

You bet there are plenty of Democrats who take money from Wall Street and Big Corporations, nuff said before I get in trouble.