Trump’s Carrier deal is the opposite of conservatism

he practices the calculus by which Washington reasons, the political asymmetry between dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. The damages from government interventions are cumulatively large but, individually, are largely invisible. The beneficiaries are few but identifiable, and their gratitude is telegenic.

.. Vice President-elect Mike Pence said, “The free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing,” Donald Trump chimed in, “Every time, every time.”

.. Indiana’s involvement in the Carrier drama exemplifies “entrepreneurial federalism” — states competing to lure businesses.

.. about the sufferings and pathologies of the white working class, largely of Scots-Irish descent, in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. This cohort, from which Vance comes, is, he says, one of America’s most distinctive subcultures, particularly in its tenacious clinging to traditional mores, many of them destructive.

 .. Vance casts a cool eye on the theory that “if they only had better access to jobs, other parts of their lives would improve as well.” His primary concern is with “lack of agency” and “learned helplessness” — the passive acceptance of victim status.
.. One theory of the 2016 election is that the white working class rebelled not just against economic disappointments but also against condescension, demanding not just material amelioration but, even more, recognition of its dignity. It is, however, difficult for people to believe in their own dignity when they believe that their choices are powerless to alter their lives’ trajectories. Eventually, they will detect the condescension in the government’s message that their fortunes are determined not by things done by them but by things done to them.
.. Such people are susceptible to charismatic presidential leadership, with its promise that executive power without limits can deliver them from unhappiness by delivering to them public goods.

Trump wants to impose a whopping 35% tariff on businesses that move jobs overseas. This is why.

.. The Trump foreign economic plan most closely resembles President Herbert Hoover’s “mercantilist” approach, which tried to deal with the 1929 crash of the U.S. economy by protecting U.S. industry from foreign competition (and Mexican immigrants). The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 dramatically increased U.S. tariffs on imports, thereby hurting America’s trade partners. Those countries, especially the European ones, responded with trade tariffs of their own. The resulting trade war worsened economic problems, produced the Great Depression, and paved the way for Nazis in Germany. If Trump’s “close the borders” approach led to trade wars with China and others that were even half as nasty as those of the 1930s, the world would be immeasurably worse off.

.. Neoliberalism has arguably produced the conditions that are leading to its own eclipse at the hands of Trump. This suggests that it creates the conditions for its own demise, as the political and economic theorist Karl Polanyi suggested in the 1940s.

 .. Equally, it is likely to lead to retaliation from other countries, and very strong opposition from multinational firms, who have often supported the Republican party in the past. If Trump and the people around him get his way, America is about to launch a vast new experiment in economic policy, with highly uncertain consequences for the US economy and the world.

Donald Trump Promises to Usher In New ‘Industrial Revolution’ in Ohio Rally

President-elect vows sweeping changes to trade policy, national security, infrastructure, military spending and immigration

 President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday said his administration would usher in a new “Industrial Revolution,” one of numerous promises he made in Cincinnati as he began a nationwide “Thank You” tour following his Nov. 8 election… During his speech, he stuck to many of his campaign promises. He said a wall would be built along the U.S.-Mexico border. He said his administration would “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. He said the Trump administration would seek plans and deals that benefited Americans first and not get duped into deals with other countries.

“There is no global anthem, no global currency,” he said. “We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American flag.”

—He said he would rebuild urban areas that are blighted with crime, and said he would make the murder rate fall by changes to law enforcement policies.

—He said “we will finally end illegal immigration” and “dismantle the criminal cartels, and liberate our communities from the epidemic of gang violence and drugs pouring into our nation.”

—On the economy, he said “we can reverse the stagnation and usher in a period of true opportunity and growth.”

.. “People are constantly telling me and telling you to reduce our expectations,” he said. “Those people are fools. They’re fools.”

 ..“The era of economic surrender is over,” he said. “We’re going to fight for every last American job. It is time to remove the rust from the rust belt and usher in a new industrial revolution. We’re going to do it.”