Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Who's backward?
Obama, recommending more globalism as the cure for globalism:
"We can't look backwards for the answer. We have to look forward."
Cute but deceptive.
What he means is that the Golden Age of sane trade policy is 'nostalgic' and backward, and Globalism is 'progressive' and forward.
Which came first? Globalism came first. Without going all the way back to Xerxes or Genghis Khan or Caesar or Napoleon, American globalism began with McKinley in the 1890s and got fully underway with Wilson in 1912. This is what Obama means by globalism.
The Golden Age of American industry was 'seeded' by Ford around 1910 and got fully running when FDR broke the bankers in 1933. Sane industrial policy and non-interventionist foreign policy continued all the way through LBJ. (Truman tried to restore Wilsonian globalism but didn't succeed.) LBJ broke the non-interventionist side, then Nixon broke the industrial side by trashing the gold standard and introducing environmentalism.
Both modes have existed all through human history. Both modes are backward AND forward. But in this specific context globalism is MORE backward than localism.
¶ 9:17 AM 
