By David Harsanyi
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
“We don’t have a level playing field for our workers,”
Donald Trump told a group of workers in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday. Truth
is, if we ever leveled the playing field with countries like Mexico and China,
the average American worker would be making $3 an hour and spending their
pittance on third-world health care and decrepit housing. Please don’t level
the playing field, thank you very much.
When few things are going your way in politics, though,
it’s customary to return to rhetoric that made you successful. So, as
Republicans have been unable to push forward on health-care or tax reform — or
anything not named Neil Gorsuch, for that matter — it is unsurprising that
Trump would turn to protectionism as a way to bolster his political fortunes.
On Tuesday, the president traveled to a tool
manufacturing company in Wisconsin and threw some nationalistic bromides at a
blue-collar crowd (none of which included the words “I’m afraid some of your
jobs will be taken by robots in the future”), then signed an executive order
ordering the White House to look into ways to curb guest worker visa programs
and require government agencies to buy more goods and services from American
companies.
The “Hire American” chunk of the executive order is meant
to crack down on “abuses” (according to Trump officials) of the H-1B visa
program. Democrats have long deployed words like “loophole” to describe actions
that are perfectly legal but which they haven’t yet figured out how to regulate
or tax. For Trump officials, the word “abuse” is now being used in the same
way. It’s hardly abusive for industries to decide who they want to hire instead
of letting government decide for them.
For the past five years there have been nearly 200,000
foreigners applying for open positions each year. So the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services holds a lottery and gives out 85,000 visas to high-skilled
foreign workers. It’s a program that’s most popular with the tech industry due
to a shortage of Americans trained in science and engineering. Rather than
finding ways to incentivize Americans to become math majors, I suppose it’s a
lot easier to stop talented immigrants from entering the country.
Over the past couple of decades, a high number of
immigrants (which many H-1B visa holders become) have been part of innovations
and start-ups that have created jobs for American workers. Now, even if you
don’t believe immigrants add economic value, how exactly is cutting down on
high-tech visas going to help rehabilitate the economically depressed areas of
the nation?
Moreover, it seems telling that many of those who are
concerned about illegal immigration
also seem intent on lowering numbers of legal and potentially high-achieving
immigrants from entering the country. The underlying message is that there is a
cultural, not merely economic, problem. “When two-thirds or three-quarters of
the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think…” the
White House’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon said not long ago in a jumbled
explanation of economic nationalism. “A country is more than an economy. We’re
a civic society.”
The second part of the order cuts down on waivers and
exemptions to President Herbert Hoover’s “Buy American” law. It instructs
agencies to use American-made goods and services rather than saving taxpayer
dollars or searching out the best deals they can. This is how we incentivize
rent-seeking and cronyism. Until a couple of months ago, this is what
Republicans used to call “picking winners and losers.” If you thought GM
shouldn’t be bailed out because it couldn’t compete in a global marketplace,
why would you support a state-impelled “Buy American. Hire American” when it
comes to steel, for example?
In a political sense, the idea of “Buy American. Hire
American” is like much like fighting climate change: a comforting
government-prescribed solution that people embrace in theory but rarely in
practice. In the protectionist’s universe, everyone with a Samsung cell phone
or a Toyota Camry (both the best-selling brands in their categories) would be a
traitor to the American worker. In the real world, competition allows us to buy
the best products at the cheapest prices — and then to buy more things with the
money we save. The rules of economics don’t give us waivers for being American.
How damaging will Trump’s trade agenda be? Who knows?
Despite the protestations of the Left — and their eight-year weakening of
constitutional restrictions on executive power — Trump’s power has always been
curbed by the realities of the job. But protectionism is one area where he
could find willing partners in both parties.
Protectionism, after all, is where Trump is most
comfortable and effective. It’s the issue that made him, the one he is most
coherent about, and the one with which he has shown the most ideological
affinity. Because of its political potency, it has also seen converts, not only
among blue-collar Americans but among one-time free-market conservatives.
“Buy American,” an appealing and patriotic-sounding
solution, is popular across ideological lines. The protectionist impulses of
the progressive left — the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren wing — closely
align with Trump once the cultural aspects are stripped away. In American
politics, both parties seem to have warmed to the idea that we can regulate the
country into economic growth. The biggest risk is that protectionist rhetoric
will be normalized within the GOP, which means there will be two parties with
significant factions embracing mercantilism. How long before that kind of
support manifests in truly destructive legislation?
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