And that includes Donald Trump.
Globalization is not simply a problem of trade negotiators being "stupid" as Donald Trump insists, the problem is generated by a technology revolution and it is compounded by a breakdown of our political system.
When the candidate perceived to be the most hawkish on trade deals goes to the voters of Iowa and tells them that he will not only protect their subsidies to grow corn and force people to burn it up in their cars but he will increase those subsidies, we have the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that some politically powerful interest groups prevail in trade negotiations to the disadvantage of less politically connected sectors of the economy.
So Donald Trump wants to maintain corn subsidies but he might or might not want to trim the tariffs which keep a few families in Florida immensely wealthy growing sugarcane.
Donald Trump has not even touched on the complexities in trade generated by the digital revolution. The doctor who reads your next x-ray might well be in India. He will do so in real time at a real discount. The temptation to trim soaring medical costs by outsourcing radiology to India is obviously very appealing. IBM has literally more than 100,000 people sitting before computer monitors in India around the clock doing IT work for numerous American and European concerns. The number increases daily and it is not limited to IBM.
The problem with permitting government to decide which industries shall be protected and which shall be sacrificed is one that goes back to the Articles of Confederation. Sectional tariff disputes must be recognized as one, if not a leading, cause of our Civil War. It should be recognized as one of the principal causes of the war of 1812.
The libertarian in me suggests that it is better for the market rather than for socialists like Barack, Hillary, Bernie or Elizabeth to decide which industries shall be favored. Can you imagine President Hillary doing so without corruption? Supplicants will be lined up out the door of the Clinton Foundation.
And the realist in me believes that Donald Trump is certainly among the worst individuals we could possibly select to loose upon the delicate balance that makes up trade negotiations. He is ham-handed, he is a vulgarian, he is despised by every European I have ever met and, one cannot doubt, by the rest of the world, he is mistrusted as revealed by his colossal negatives by a majority of the Americans whose lives he would profoundly affect in these deals. In short, he might become president of the United States but he would not have legitimacy so necessary to make decisions making some rich and some poor.
Yet, the realist in me also believes that we cannot go on as we have been going on with these trade deals. My experience here in Germany suggests to me that a more mercantilist approach is warranted but, as the initial headline of this reply suggests:
No one seems to have a solution to this problem.
To try to shape global trade is to turn to politics to solve an economic problem. It is to invite corruption into the whole of the world's economy. It is certainly to favor the elites over the left behind. It can only be done by a president with the entire support of the people. Even then, the odds are that the deals will be corrupt and, even when well-intentioned, misguided. Anyone who knows the story of the pencil knows that elites, even Harvard educated elites, are not smart enough to run a $14 trillion economy or a world economy.
I fear of that even a well-intentioned adjustment of trade policy will fail because our education establishment is failing us, our immigration policy is destroying our culture and making the job of the educational establishment impossible. Our culture is further deteriorating because it is more secularized every day. Finally, we do not know whether it is trade policy or tax policy, trade policy or environmental policy, trade policy or burdensome regulations that are hollowing out our economy. We do not know these things because we have not the data. So the temptation is to lurch toward easy solutions in our ignorance.
